


But You Hate Blueberries

by tisfan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Coffee Shops, Courtroom Drama, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, The Trial of Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2019-10-13 15:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17490146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Bucky's spent his whole life eating blueberry muffins because some day... some day, his soul mate will ask about them.Today is that day.The fact that Bucky hates blueberries should have been a sign...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this fic posts monthly
> 
> For more details about this fic, [please see this post here.](https://tisfan.tumblr.com/post/182149847559/fic-report-week-3)

“Hey, wake up,” someone was saying. They poked him a few times with their shoe, as if testing to see if he was alive. Bucky supposed that happened, sleeping on the streets in New York wasn’t exactly for the weak.

Bucky didn’t want to wake up, honestly. He’d only been drowsing, really, just enough to know he was cold, but not enough to really do anything about it. Everything else about the morning was bad news.

“Seriously, dude, you can’t sleep here, you know that.” The same someone kept nudging him, and he knew the cadence of those nudges. Not quite fast enough to be annoyed yet, but if Bucky kept loitering, they would get there. And if it got all the way to shaking, Bucky’d be lucky if he avoided another run in with the cops.

So far, he’d managed to get the same cop, who was placated with a small bribe, and he’d stayed under the radar. He wasn’t sure how he’d managed it, really. After the shit that went down in Austria, he wasn’t sure how anyone didn’t recognize him. On the plus side, it seemed to have thrown Black Widow and Captain America off his trail.

He’d given Wilson and Steve as much information about the Winter Soldier as he could, and then he’d given up one precious nugget of his past. _Tell the Black Widow. Tell her, and then follow her advice._ Despite Steve’s best efforts, Bucky stole away, ditched them as soon as he could, and went back on the run. He didn’t know the details about what had happened then, but based on some of the stories, he could figure it out.

Steve and his crew of superheros had gone to the Widow, had told her what Bucky said. And then the Iron Man had gone to the mat for them. Bucky didn’t know the details, but he could guess. The evidence -- and five dead Winter Soldiers -- suggested some sort of reconciliation.

“Yeah, I’m up, I’m up.” Bucky stood up, smoothed out the wrinkles in his coat, and stretched. His stomach growled audibly.

The woman who stepped back several paces when Bucky stood, sighed. “Okay, so I’m a soft touch,” she said. “You look hungry. Come inside while I open up and I’ll make you a coffee and you can have a muffin, or something. Start the day off with a solid meal?”

Well, the morning was looking better already.

She introduced herself as Amy -- _this is my place, call me Amy, Bean There, Done That_ \-- and accepted an introduction to James. Close enough, and James was a really common name, She directed him to take chairs off the tables and set them up, and to bring her the last of the dirty dishes in the bin, which Bucky was happy to do. Even after all these years, charity felt… _weird_. He bagged the trash and ran a broom over the floor while he was at it. Pittance, really, but it felt oddly satisfying. This was work he could do. Work he could do, that didn’t hurt anyone. There really wasn’t much call for a semi-stable, hundred year old sniper.

After that, she put him to work on the dishes, and scrubbing the kitchen counters. By the time he tossed the rag in the sink, Amy was unlocking for the day’s work.

“I’d get you to start on the sandwiches and stuff,” she said, with a shrug, “but I don’t expect you have a food handler’s license. So, coffee? What kind of muffin would you like?”

“Do you have blueberry?”

It was a habit to ask, even though, as Steve would have said, “but you _hate_ blueberries.”

Bucky pressed a hand to his ribs where a crabbed set of words asked _Do you know if those blueberry muffins are any good?_

And Bucky’d just gotten in the habit of asking for them, every time he ordered coffee or from a pastry case. Fate might have a soul mate in mind for him, but there was never any harm in nudging fate, right?

Then seventy years passed and for all Bucky knew, he could have met his soul mate, could have said the right words for them, and he couldn’t remember it. For two years, overseas, hiding, pretending to be normal, and he hadn’t asked for a blueberry anything. His soulmate was probably old, or dead. He hoped they’d had a good life, even if they never found their mate. There was no point in trying to nudge fate. There was no more fate to nudge. For Bucky, whatever magic there was in the world, it was gone.

Back in the United States, the very first time he went into an American coffee shop, and here he was, ordering a blueberry damn muffin.

And now he was going to have to choke it down, even though he really did not actually like blueberries -- more a cheese danish sort of guy, really -- because he couldn’t just toss it. That would hurt Amy’s feelings and she’d been more than kind to him. Tomorrow, he promised himself. _Tomorrow_ he’d buy a cheese danish.

“One coffee with milk, one blueberry muffin,” Amy said, cheerfully placing his plate on the pick up counter.

“Do you know if those blueberry muffins are any good?” a voice asked, and for just a moment, Bucky was sure he had to be fucking _hallucinating_ , because he was just thinking about his soulmate for the first time in decades, wondering about them. The voice was vaguely familiar, like he’d heard it before, and it trembled into his chest and down his spine like a lightning strike.

He didn’t turn around, he didn’t move. He barely breathed.

His soulmate, standing less than two feet away.

He wondered how many people’s words were “oh, it’s you.”

Bucky swallowed, wet his lips, not knowing what the hell was going to come out of his mouth.

“Trade ya for a cheese danish,” he said. And turned…

“Oh fuck, it’s _you_.”

Bucky didn’t know who said it first. He was staring in the wide, stunned, whiskey dark eyes of Tony goddamn Stark.

The Iron Man.


	2. Good Luck with Your Cheese Danish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tony goes to the coffee shop...
> 
> ... and meets someone entirely unexpected

“Look, I know you miss your boyfriend, Cap,” Tony said. He had the latest case file from the UN Peacekeeping Committee (UNPC) -- which was a stupid thing to call the small board of members who directed Avengers activities around the globe -- up on the holograms. “The fact that he’s kept under the radar since the fall of SHIELD, popping up just long enough to give us all a case of the whimwhams, and then disappearing again, means I don’t think you’re gonna find his ass until his ass wants to be found. And in the meanwhile, we have--”

“Make-work and PR projects, Tony,” Steve said. “It’s demeaning.”

“Relocating refugees from a 5.7 earthquake,” Tony spoke over him. Why did Cap fight him on every little thing? It certainly wasn’t Steve’s fault that the Winter Boobear had gone missing. It wasn’t like Tony wasn’t doing whatever he could to keep an ear to the ground about it, along with Thor and Bruce, neither of whom had been seen since the whole Ultron thing.

He kinda hoped those two were helping each other out, at least. Somewhere. How the hell did you hide a nine-foot green monster and a semi-demi god? Tony didn’t know, but he hadn’t been able to find them.

Nine billion people on the planet, it was no wonder most people never met their soulmates. Tony couldn’t even find three people that he had facial recognition software for.

“Standing guard over the World Summit on Sustainable Development is just a stunt, Tony, and I’m not gonna do it.”

“I think--” Vision said, stopped himself politely as Steve looked like he was going to keep right on talking.

“What do you think, Viz?” Wanda asked, her hand possessively on Vision’s wrist. That was something Tony was never going to quite get over. He, admittedly, had a boner for his own tech sometimes, but he sort of viewed Viz as at least partially his own child. Sort of. It was weird, and like all family trees, the Starks had a couple of nuts in it. But also, Viz was a child, practically. He was only two years old, and even though he had the entire catalog of human knowledge practically at his fingertips, he wasn’t… mature.

Tony knew exactly how that went, really. Going to college at fourteen probably wasn’t the same as carrying on with a super-powered witchy woman, but Tony was…

… minding his own goddamn business.

“The WSSD was an ambitious project near the turn of the century, and many grand ideas came out of the meeting of so many brilliant minds, and non-governmental organizations,” Viz said. “If representation from the Avengers is needed, I would be honored to attend.”

“Great, volunteer for Johannesburg summit, check,” Tony said. Tony wasn’t the boss of the Avengers; technically, that was Rhodey’s job. Or, one of them, at least. But he often delegated Tony to act in his stead.

If Steve would stop being a hot-headed asshole, Tony thought, he could get off probation, and Tony would gleefully hand all of the administrative shit back over to him. But since Steve point-blank refused to deal with the administrative shit -- he wouldn’t even consider hiring someone like Pepper to do it -- and not to mention that little incident in Germany, Rhodey was the boss, Tony was the sub-boss and Steve was the class clown.

Sometimes Tony wondered if Steve had taken up the job of piss-and-moaner because Clint had retired.

No way to tell, really.

“I will also go,” Wanda said. That was only to be expected; Wanda and Viz were a team, no matter how unteamly they seemed to Tony. He wasn’t entirely certain _that_ was a good plan’ Wanda had not made friends the last time she’d been to Africa, but hey, it was a big continent, and Steve was right to some extent. This was PR. What better PR than to have Wanda representing the team, and to not screw it up.

Positing, of course, that she didn’t screw it up.

“One more for the summit--”

“What the hell, I haven’t been out of the country in a while,” Sam Wilson said. “And I always wanted to see an actual wild lion.”

“No molesting the local wildlife, Falcon,” Tony told him. But honestly, he was relieved. Sam was like Steve had been, before Steve got bitter. Dedicated to doing the right thing, usually violently, and showing off, but the right thing nonetheless. And a person of color on the PR team would look good for the pictures. Avenging was a diverse program.

Well, not really, Tony had to admit, but they were trying to recruit promising young people of power -- Kamala Khan was certainly a good candidate, Tony thought.

“Right. That leaves me, Widow, Lang and Van Dyne, wow, I really feel like I ought to change my theme to something insectoid with that crew -- unless you want to join us, Cap? To handle the refugee issue?”

Tony actually expected Cap to refuse; he’d sat out of the last few missions, except when there was a clear military objective. Do-gooding didn’t always mean standing up to bad men; a lot of times it also meant helping in smaller, less glamorous ways. Tony didn’t know where everything had gone wrong; the guy his dad always talked about was just as much into helping little old ladies as he was to stomping Nazis.

Maybe Cap just needed some new Nazis.

Don’t worry, big guy, Tony thought. The world is making new Nazis even as we speak.

That was depressing, too.

“Yeah, I’ll… see what I can do,” Cap said.

“Great!”

“Thank you, I know we could sure use your help,” Natasha added.

“Oh, it’s gonna be such an honor,” Lang started up with his fanboying again, and Tony took that as the cue to drop the files and break the meeting. Time to get some coffee and do some science.

God, he missed Bruce.

Bruce would find the logistics of moving fifty thousand displaced refugees to be an exercise in efficiency.

“I’m going to stretch my legs a bit and grab a coffee,” Tony said. “There’s a place just down the way, I’ve heard great things about their blueberry muffins. You… wanna come along, Cap? Get a slice of apple pie?” Steve rarely responded to any of Tony’s friendly gestures. Which sucked, because they’d been friends, once. Before the bullshit with Barnes and before the Winter Soldier.

Tony constantly felt like he was teetering on the edge of Something Worse with Cap, and he didn’t even know what it was, so he kept trying.

Pepper would have told him he was too needy, wanted too much reassurance. Too clingy.

Pepper might have said all that, but they were still on their break, and as far as Tony could tell, that was never going to unbreak.

Maybe, maybe it would have if he hadn’t had the damn words.

Soulmates were rare, and getting more rare with every generation, It was a recessive trait to start with, like true redheads. These days, soulmates almost never found each other. The words on Tony’s wrist didn’t matter, he’d never hear them, more than likely. He’d never meet the person he was destined for.

Which didn’t bother him nearly so much as it bothered Pepper.

“One day, Tony,” she had said, flapping her hands at him, “you’ll just leave. It won’t matter how hard we’ve tried to stay together, or how much we love each other. You’ll just… find them.”

“Pep,” Tony had tried, already knowing it wasn’t any good. “I’m almost fifty years old, if I was going to find them at all, I’d think I would have done it already.”

“Good luck with your cheese danish,” she had told him. She had kissed his cheek, left the room.

It was over.

The nice thing about living in the city is that people minded their own business with a fucking vengeance. You didn’t stare at Stan Lee, you didn’t bother Beyonce, and you didn’t catcall Celine Deon. Those were just… rules.

Kids could, and did, frequently interrupt Tony for autographs, and that was okay.

Not that day, though.

It was ridiculous o’clock in the morning, and the only reason why Tony had held the meeting that early at all was because he was seeing sunrise from the other side. And also, Cap tended to be a little more approachable directly after his morning run. Endorphins, or something. Tony wouldn’t know. Personally, Tony only ran when chased.

The coffee shop was open, but almost utterly empty when Tony went in. He looked around a moment, as if to make sure he hadn’t walked into the wrong building or something, but no, _Bean There, Done That_. Cute name. He got in line behind a scruffy-looking guy who was cradling a blueberry muffin close to his chest.

It smelled amazing; even over the coffee smell, and the smell of poorly acquainted with hygiene guy, Tony could smell fresh blueberries, and those little crunchy oatmeal clusters on top.

“Do you know if those blueberry muffins are any good?”

And then Tony had to scramble for the plate because the guy fumbled it, and really, even though that muffin looked and smelled like it was too good to be true, there was no sense in _wasting_ it.

“Trade ya for a cheese danish,” the guy said.

Tony had always wondered, before, when someone said the words… was it possible to miss them? Could you be in a crowded room and miss the soft sounds of your soul finding its partner?

Tony didn’t know about the crowded room part.

But everything else in the whole world fell away as Tony recognized the sounds, the syllables, the _soul_ … that spoke to him.

And then he looked up to see--

“Oh, fuck. It’s you.” And the first thing Tony thought about was that Cap was going to be mad as hell that he missed it, because Tony’s damn soulmate…

… was the _fucking Winter Soldier._


	3. So Long and Thanks for all the Plums

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things do not go as well as one might hope...
> 
> ... But there is a kiss.

“Friday, suit, now,” Stark barked.

Bucky wasn’t sure what to do, or how to respond, because there was his goddamn soul mate. Getting ready to throw down in a goddamn coffee shop.

Not, really, that Bucky could blame him, but really, it just seemed unfair of the universe that his soul mate was also his arch-enemy.

Bucky would have thought, after everything he’d gone through with Hydra and SHIELD and goddamn Helmut Zemo, that he would have been accustomed to the general unfairness of the universe.

The fact that he didn’t move right up until Stark almost repulsored him in the face suggested otherwise.  

Okay, so Stark didn’t _actually_ shoot at him.

Bucky was a good enough marksman to recognize talent when he saw it, and knew a warning shot when he saw that.

Stark was a good marksman. Nearly on a match with Bucky himself. So if he’d wanted Bucky dead, Bucky would have been a pile of ashes in his fucking boots. Which meant Stark was drastically redecorating the coffee shop, but not killing his own soulmate.

“Hey, hey,” Bucky said, holding his hands out -- not up, he wasn’t surrendering, he never fucking gave up, and if Stark thought he was going to go down without a fight, than Stark had vastly underestimated who his damn soulmate was -- but out. _Stop, hang on, wait up._ “You see how I’m not shootin’ back, here, right?”

“What, Murder Hobo, you think we can just talk this out? You killed. My mom.”

Tears prickled at Bucky’s eyes, making them burn and sting. “I know.”

“You killed Ho-- you killed my father,” Stark continued. “He was supposed to have been _your friend_.”

Howard had recognized him, that cold December night. Not that the Winter Soldier felt anything as trivial as cold, and if he had even noticed the air temperature at all, it was only because the blood had been steaming out, and because Maria Stark had been wearing a fancy coat. Siberia was cold.

Cryofreeze was cold.

The Winter Soldier had been cold. Ice cold. He ignored Howard’s words, his pleas for someone to help his wife. The way Howard had said his name, like he couldn’t believe the evidence of his own eyes. Maria Stark hadn’t even begged for her life. She’d just looked at him, tears streaming down her face, as he had thrown Howard back into the car.

“I know,” Bucky said. He knew, and he remembered. Although he hadn’t. Not at first. There were too many deaths, too many assassinations, too many visits to the chair, too many years locked in a goddamn freezer. His brain was a slurry of instinct and memory, like chunks of ice in sub-arctic waters.

It had taken him months to even start putting it back together again, and then fucking Zemo had nearly cost him what little of his life and dignity he had left.

“That’s all you have to say about it?”

Bucky had nothing; not the surety when he’d faced T’Challa -- _I didn’t kill your father!_ But it was the same answer. _Why did you run?_

_I ran because of all the things I know, there are only two that matter. I cannot make up for any of my sins if I die. And Steve will burn the world to ashes before he will let me die._

Maybe he wasn’t worth any of that, but Steve didn’t see it. And Steve was already breaking things in his fight for Bucky’s soul. Bucky could -- maybe -- live with the things he had done. He _couldn’t_ live with the things Steve would do. So the solution, of course, was that Bucky had to live. He had to live and he had to make amends.

And he had no fucking clue how to do that. For the time being, he’d taken to just trying to stay out of people’s way and to get as much of his memory back as possible. Maybe, when he understood and remembered everything that had happened to him, maybe he could start the process of making up for it.

“I’m sorry.”

That was a poor, pathetic word for the regret that he lived with. Stark scoffed, apparently in full agreement.

“You’re _sorry_?”

Bucky was about to expound on that, to try to explain something that couldn’t have been explained. He didn’t do it because he wanted to, but by the time he’d been sent after the Starks, he didn’t even know that humans ever wanted things. He didn’t know who he was, or what he’d been before.

Howard looking up at him and calling him by name had meant nothing to him. Howard wasn’t even the main objective. He only had to die because he was carrying the serum. The woman didn’t have to die at all, if she hadn’t seen the Soldier.

Their deaths created the other Winter Soldiers, and it was not an even trade at all. They’d died in some grand scheme to keep Hydra in power, and it hadn’t worked _at all_.

The soldier had gone back into cryo for another twenty years or more. The Asset passed from agent to agent, until he’d ended up in Pierce’s hands. Unused. Unneeded. One more discarded weapon in a war no one even knew they were fighting.

He was going to try to say something, at least.

He cocked his head and then dove at Tony, instinct faster than thought.

Right before the shield came through the front plate window and nearly took Tony’s head off.

Stark was sprawled there, under Bucky, and it was the perfect position for Bucky to look down into wide, startled eyes. When had Stark popped up the face plate anyway?

“Bucky!” That was Steve, and beyond him was a familiar, red-haired woman. And the Falcon.

“Cavalry’s here,” Bucky told Stark.

“Question is, are they here to save you, or to save me? Friday--”

“Sorry boss,” a little voice came from Stark’s suit, near the back of the helmet. “When you called for a suit, they assembled.”

“Are you gonna tell ‘em?” Bucky wondered.

“Are you?”

Well, for soulmates, they were absolutely on the same page. No one wanted to bring that up. Bucky didn’t know how, and Stark looked like he absolutely wanted to be anywhere else, aside from--

\-- pinned under Bucky’s weight. Not that he probably couldn’t get up if he really wanted to; the suit could practically lift a tanker truck. Stark would have no problems throwing Bucky into the wall.

Bucky scrambled off, then offered Stark a hand up.

He shouldn’t have been surprised, or even hurt, that Stark rejected that offer and got himself to his feet without aid.

But he was.

“What the hell is going on, Stark?” Another woman demanded. Not the Black Widow, but someone -- well, Bucky thought he’d seen her before. The Witch, or something. Bucky tried not to pay too much attention to the superhero stuff; he was too afraid someone might recognize him.

“Pipe down, Glinda,” Stark snapped, “while I figure that out.”

“Buck, you okay?”

“Fine, Steve,” Bucky said, not taking his eyes off Stark. “Just a random encounter. I wasn’t here to hurt anyone. Just wanted a cup of coffee. I--” He started backing up, just a little. Stark didn’t match him, but he probably didn’t have to, either. Long range missile launchers and targeting systems.

“You should come on back with us,” Steve suggested, because of course he did.

“Amy?” Bucky asked, still not looking away from Stark’s wide, beautiful eyes. “You all right?”

“My shop--” she whimpered, then, “I’m ok.”

“Stark? Can I impose on you for the damages?” Bucky asked. He reached behind his back, slowly, triggering the grenade drop on his back until he had the small device in his hand. Flash bang, probably wouldn’t do anything to Stark, who would have various situational enhancers in the suit, except the fool had raised the visor.

“Since I’m the one that caused most of them, you mean?”

“No,” Bucky said. “That’s on me. I just… can’t pay it, right now.” He could get resources, if he needed them, Hydra safe houses and the like, although he’d been avoiding his former masters nearly as much as his former friends.

“I’ll take care of it,” Stark promised.

“Thank you. I’ll just-- be going?” He dropped the grenade, which went off in a series of bright flashes, a cloud of smoke, and several high pitched whines that had Steve on the ground, covering his ears for protection.

Bucky moved exactly the way no one would expect, right into Stark’s reach. “I’m sorry,” he told his soulmate. “For everything.”

Stark’s eyes were wide, unseeing, tears leaking out of them. He turned his jaw sharply at Bucky’s words, and then licked his lips.

That was probably Bucky’s downfall; he’d expected a soulmate meeting to be full of joy and kisses and--

Fuck.

He speared his hand into Stark’s hair, gripped the back of his head. Stark fought him for just a moment, knowing that he was in the hands of the world’s most feared assassin. But all Bucky did was lean in and press his lips to that mobile, sweet mouth.

For just an instant, Stark melted into it, that contact, very first touch, of his soulmate, and he couldn’t help but respond to it.

Bucky was almost as dazed as everyone affected by the flashbang.

“Gotta go,” Bucky said, and he slipped away, leaving the Avengers behind him. He ran as fast as he could, using all the tricks he knew, hit a crowd and fucking disappeared.

_Was I even there at all, or was it just the wind?_

And all the while, he kept sucking in his lower lip, as if he could save the taste of Tony’s mouth for later.


	4. If I'd Known You Were Coming (I'd Have Baked a Cake)

“Boss.”

“Tony--”

“Stark!”

Tony ignored the chorus of voices outside, in order to listen to the ones in his head. He sat down on one of the few chairs left in the coffee shop that wasn’t wrecked. The place was a complete disaster, and Tony diverted exactly half a second’s thought to what was going to be required to fix the place up again. There were PR teams in place already to spin it, financial options available, depending on whether the owner wanted to renovate or relocate.

“What the hell was up with that, Steve?” Natasha was saying. “Why is it always hit first and figure it out later, now Barnes’ is in the wind again--”

“We’ll find him,” Steve promised.

“We will?” That was Tony, drawn out of his head by the conversation. “Excuse me, Steve. It didn’t seem to me like he wanted to be found.” There had been no one more shocked than Barnes, turning around to see Tony in the coffee shop. He wasn’t looking to get caught, he wasn’t there as a call for help. He was there-- Tony didn’t know why. Hiding under Steve’s goddamn nose and taunting him, maybe?

“He doesn’t know what he wants,” Steve said. “He’s confused, he might be hurt, he needs somewhere safe--”

“Safe from  _me_?” Tony demanded. “Is that what you think this is?” Against his better judgement, and admittedly, Tony didn’t have much of that, he licked his lip. Tasting coffee and something sweet that was Barnes’ own taste against his tongue. He couldn’t help the shiver. “And he sure as hell isn’t injured.”

“You shot at him--”

“I shot near him,” Tony admitted. “You, of all people, ought to know the difference.”

“My wall can verify that,” the woman said who owned the coffee shop. She was staring at what remained of her racks of mugs, absently separating the ones that were shattered beyond repair from the ones that glue might have been able to help. Like she didn’t know what else to do.   
Tony snapped up his chin and studied her. She’d been… very close when he and Barnes had spoken. It was possible that she  _knew_. Not that it mattered. There were plenty of cases where soulmates rejected each other.

He licked his lip again.

_He killed my mom. It doesn’t matter if he meant to or not, if he wanted to or not, if Hydra forced him. Don’t you even fucking think about going to bed with the man who strangled the life out of your mother._

Too late. Tony was already thinking about it.

“I’ll take care of it,” Tony said. “Don’t worry.”

“Just because you can pay for them doesn’t give you the right to break things,” the woman snapped. “He was a homeless guy. A homeless guy, sleeping on my stoop. I brought him in and gave him something to eat. He swept the floor, for pity’s sake!”

“And before he swept your floor, he was a  _murderer_ , so excuse me for overreacting,” Tony said.

“It wasn’t him, it wasn’t his fault,” Steve protested.

 _It wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t his fault--_  it echoed around in Tony’s brain like the bridge of a song he didn’t particularly like.

“Fri-- Find him,” Tony said. He turned to the coffee shop owner. “I’m sorry about your store. We’ll replace it, or rebuild it. My people will be in touch.”

The woman scoffed and went back to sorting her teacups. Tony should probably have felt worse about it than he did, and probably later, he’d go back and rehearse the conversation again until he could make someone in this situation happy, because it sure as fuck wasn’t him. But right that instant, he didn’t care.

“Boss, uh? Easier said than done?”

“Friday?”

“I cannae find him,” the AI said, sounding a little more annoyed than ashamed.

“What, what do you mean, you can’t find him? This is one of the highest concentration of street cameras in the world, he’s been gone for five minutes, figure out where the hell he went.”

“What are you planning?”

“Nothing, I have no plan, that’s his job,” Tony said, pointing a finger at Steve. “I want Barnes found.”

“Look for someone wearing a baseball cap and a maroon shirt,” the coffee lady said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tony said. “He might have a photostatic veil. There’s no way Friday would miss a guy in a baseball cap. There’s all kinds of facial recognition software, this is one of the largest cities in the world. We’ll find him. He did not fucking vanish because he’s wearing a baseball cap!”

 

***

 

Bucky tugged his baseball cap down further on his forehead, shielding his eyes. He didn’t look up, didn’t study the skyline or peer around, or look over his shoulder. 

He just walked, trying not to think.

People got out of his way as he moved; but not all of them. He was actively not murder-striding, so sometimes he bumped shoulders with people.

Why couldn’t his soul mate have been someone he just passed on the street corner, never knowing that they were that close.

He rejected his first four bolt holes. Turned into a subway entrance. He could move around easier underground.

Steve -- and maybe Tony -- would be looking for him.

He passed the second maintenance station, paused. Dug around in his pocket and took an orange button sticker from the sheet in his wallet. Placed it carefully at the side of the breaker box. A simple orange dot.

Maintenance guys used those dots all the time to indicate that a box had been serviced recently, or that someone had complained about a location.

Any number of things.

For Bucky, and the few contacts he’d carefully curated, the dot meant something else entirely. Mostly it meant that he’d been found, and that he needed help. Someone to bring him food and water, change of clothing. Someone to get money and access.

Someone to get him new papers, a new identity. Goodbye, James Baker, hello Jason Breedon. Or whoever. Didn’t even matter anymore. Bucky hadn’t known who he was for decades at a time. There was no sense being attached to a false persona. It was no more real than Bucky Barnes.

He was a ghost.

_Can’t run forever, pal._

“You just watch me.”

Bucky rubbed at his soul words; they were burning… the bond was fresh, sparkling. Over the next few days, the words writ in dull black ink would change and shift until they were a riot of color. Anyone who saw them would know that he’d found his mate.

If the bond was rejected, eventually the letters would turn ash grey, fade entirely, leaving only a scar on the skin, an emptiness in the heart. Bucky had read stories of it happening, hell, they all had. Tragedies all the way back as early as the written word. Someone got married, and then found their mate. The political climate of the time prevented their marriage.

War…

For every happy ending, there were a dozen broken hearts that would never quite be capable of healing.

Bucky rubbed his artificial thumb over the words.

Why couldn’t it a been this arm, he wondered. If the words were cut off-- he didn’t know what would happen, had never read that. Would the words have shown up somewhere else? Or would the link have been severed?

A mix of faith, genetics, a little bit of the latent psychic. No one really knew why the words showed up, but they did.

Bucky finally made it all the way back into the depths of the tunnels, unused track, blocked by cement walls, with not-quite secret entrances. Inside, there were a few abandoned cars. Someone had been there recently; the old oil barrel that served as a beacon and stove and heat source was still warm, although the fire was all the way down to a mere smolder.

_Kinda like your life, hey, pal?_

“Shut up, Steve,” Bucky muttered. He knew it was crazy, talking to Steve. He hadn’t even known who Steve was, for like years. Just a voice in his head, among so many other voices. But Steve’s had been persistent, had endured.

Maybe that was why, so many decades later, the Winter Soldier had hesitated.

Didn’t matter.

Bucky talked to the voices in his head. He’d done far, far crazier things.

_He’s never going to stop._

Bucky pulled back his sleeve to look at his words.  _Do you know_

“No, honey, I don’t know,” Bucky said. The first few words were already brilliant, hot rod red, lined with gold. Fucking gorgeous, really. Just like Tony’s face.

He raised the mark to his mouth and kissed the skin there. The letters felt hot under his lips, like a bonfire, like lava.  _Hunka hunka burning love_. He barely remembered the fifties, but the music had stuck around.

Bucky needed to leave, he needed to leave town, or someone was going to catch him. Someone was going to find him. Damn Steve to hell, really. If the man hadn’t been so persistent, hadn’t chased him all the way around the world, maybe Bucky would be ready to deal with any of this.

 _Michigan’s in the rearview now_ , Bucky though, senselessly. Nothing made sense. His world was made up of running and hiding. Of pretending that he was real and knowing that the real person had died on that mountain in the Alps. Scraps of song lyrics, quotes from books he’d never read. Words from handlers and trainers, mechanics and techs. Words from his victims.

_Please, help my wife… Sergeant Barnes?_

Another flare of pain on his arm.

_Blueberry Muffins._

Even as he watched, the letters changed, flaring to a brilliant sapphire blue. Of course.

Of course.

“You don’t love me. You can’t love me. I--”

 _I’ll take care of it._  

***

“Friday?” Tony asked. The lights didn't go on in the penthouse. 

She didn't answer and Tony was an inch from summoning a suit when a piece of shadow moved.

“I didn't hurt her,” Barnes said, stepping out from the patch of blackness.

“What did you do?” Tony would have to get on a fucking patch for that, right away. Friday was his last line of defense.

The lights flicked and came on. “Boss!”

“I got it, baby girl,” Tony said, which was a lie. He didn't have anything, but he knew damn well that if an assassin wanted him dead, Tony would already have been dodging bullets. “Barnes. If I knew you were coming, I would have baked a cake.”

“I just wanted to talk,” Barnes said, holding his hands out, like that meant anything. “Just to talk.”

“Boss, he has a weapon,” Friday said.

“I  _am_ a weapon,” Barnes said.

“Your pal Steve has been trying to convince me that you're not,” Tony said, moving into the middle of the room. the armor could form around him in seconds, with no interference from certain Avengers.

“I don't do that anymore,” Barnes said. “But…”

“You're not deweaponized, you're just not deployed, currently?” Tony suggested.

“Something like that,” Barnes confessed. “I could hurt someone. I could hurt  _you_.”

“That's debatable,” Friday snapped. She formed up one of the armors, standing guard. Good girl.

“I don't want to.” 

“I don't want to go to board meetings, either,” Tony said, giving him a snide look. He went to the wet bar and poured himself a drink. Took a sip, another one. “Drink?”

“You're offering me a drink?”

“Offered an insane demigod and my Godfather drinks, too.”

“I could kill you,” Barnes protested.

Had no one ever ever learned that Tony was not that easy to kill? “So could a really determined duck, baby. You're not that special.”

Barnes laughed. “Sure. A drink. Let's act civilized.”

“I wouldn't go that far,” Tony said, but poured him a few fingers of his dad's finest scotch. There was probably something ironic about that, but Tony was never very good at English class. He was more into integers than adverbs.

“Thanks.”

Tony watched Barnes drink, trying not to notice the way his throat moved when he swallowed, the way his eyes drifted closed like a man in the grip of stronger stuff. The way his tongue flicked out to catch the last drops on his lip.

“So, is this the part where you tell me what you want?”

“Yeah,” Barnes said. “Guess it is.”

He drew the gun he has stashed at the small of his back. Tony almost panicked, called for the suit, and in fact, Friday was already covering him, when Barnes turned the gun and offered it to Tony.

“Judas bullets,” Barnes said. “They’ll go right through just about anythin’, including serum enhanced skin. Chews you up, real good. Lethal against an enhanced.”

“Untrue,” Tony said, because one, Judas bullets were made by Justin goddamn Hammer, and his tech was shitty, even if it was upgraded by Chitari scrap parts, and two, because Tony actually knew for a fact that Luke Cage had been nailed with a few of them, and that a nurse had managed to help him heal. It was, admittedly, probably unlikely that there were many nurses willing to take those sorts of risks. Claire Temple was one of a kind, a fact for which Hell’s Kitchen was not as grateful as it should have been. “But I’ll grant they pack a little more punch than your average BB gun. What do you want me to do with it?”

Tony took the gun, turned it in his hand with a professional eye. He knew weapons, and while the bullets might Stop, Hammer time, the weapon itself wasn’t bad. A Glock 17 9mm. Not bad. Not great. There were better, but it did the job.

“‘F I said shoot me with it, would you?”

“It’s not likely,” Tony snapped. “They arrest people for that. It’s a crime, you might have heard of it, called  _murder_.”

“Yeah, I’m aware.”

“So, yeah, that’s not happening,” Tony said. He disassembled the gun, threw the pieces on the floor, and considered using the gauntlet to melt the damn thing down.

“Then  _tell_  me what to do,” Barnes burst, sounding on the verge of tears. “I don’t know what to do-- can’t run, can’t hide, can’t fight.”

“Do you want me to tell you what to do as the son of two people you murdered, or do you want me to tell you what to do as your soul mate?”

“Just a man,” Barnes said. “Tell me what to do, as a man, who’s made terrible decisions, who’s had his will taken away, who’s been a monster, who was made into a monster. Tell me!”

Tony took a deep breath, held it.

“Turn yourself in,” Tony said. “You can-- petition for a hearing. Everyone has the right to a trial. Present your case. Go to psychiatrists-- a real one, this time. Have your day in court. Live with whatever consequences there are.”

“And what are you gonna do?”

Tony nodded, because Barnes had to know, he had to know that there was this undeniable pull between them. This-- bond. “I’ll foot the bill,” Tony said. “It’s what I always do. You’ll have the best damn defense money can buy.”


	5. All Your Eggs in One Basket

“You, sit,” Tony said, pointing to a smallish sofa. “Fri, watch him, would you, and call Miss Potts for me, send it to the earbud.”

Not like Bucky wouldn’t be able to hear it anyway, but Tony might not know that. Bucky didn’t bother to point it out, either. Just sank onto the sofa. He was pretty sure that his clothes were filthy and that he was staining the expensive fabric, but really, it was just good to sit and to stay put and to not have to think. Let his soulmate handle everything.

Just for a while.

Bucky tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling.

It was white, crossed with exposed steel supports. Probably just for the look of it. Aesthetic as people called it. A fancy word for _showing off_.

Tony paced around the room. “Potts, yes, thank you-- I know. It’s important--”

Well, Tony’s earbud was quieter than Bucky might have thought. He couldn’t hear Potts at all.

“I have three things that I need, and I need them like, this morning,” Tony said. “Yeah, first, and probably least important, my cheese danish finally arrived, so I need a makeup artist. The best you’ve got, for a long term coverup. Yeah, I’ll get to it. Someone who can be paid enough to keep their fucking mouth shut for-- however, yes, there’s a problem with the danish, it’s me, sugar, you always knew there was going to be a problem, right?”

Bucky tilted his head to watch Tony. He didn’t really care for the idea of Tony calling someone else “sugar” which was just ridiculous, because he didn’t know the guy at all. But there was a pull, and that pull said “competitor for Tony’s affections.”

Did Bucky even want Tony as a soulmate? It didn’t much matter, since biology was fact, but he hadn’t even thought about wanting him. For himself. He supposed he must, if he was feeling jealousy. Must want Tony for _something_ \-- even if he was just the stray dog in the manger, making all the cows leave, without being able to eat the hay himself.

“Okay, that’s settled then, thank you, I love you, you’re amazing, buy yourself something nice, from me,” Tony said. “Second thing, I need the best legal defense team available. I don’t care what other trials they’re covering or who their other clients are, I need the best, particularly in cases of treason--”

Bucky let his eyes drift shut again. He was a traitor. To his country, to his code, to his oath. To himself. He didn’t care what Tony -- or anything -- said. He might not have been able to stop what they did to him, but there were a few, a very few occasions, in which he could have _ended_ it. He wondered if they’d call the Black Widow to the stand and ask her about the man who’d taught her how to kill.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, it does,” Tony said. “Which is problem number three, and what I need you the most for. My cheese danish… is Barnes.”

Tony crossed the room and threw himself down-- on the sofa. Next to Bucky, barely a hand’s width separated them.

Like he’d forgotten Bucky was there. There was a flare of pain in Bucky’s words, and he knew the last few words had colored in.

Or maybe it was that he’d forgotten he was supposed to hate Bucky, and was seeking comfort in the closeness of his soulmate. Who was causing all the discomfort in the first place.

Bucky froze in place, not knowing what to do, or say, or how to help. So he just sat there, wordless, still as a statue.

“Thanks, yeah… no, I just need-- what I’ve always needed from you, Pep.”

Tony paused, glanced at Bucky. “No, I think we’ll… yeah. Sounds great, see you then.”

“Make up artist,” Bucky said, because that was easier than asking if Tony was going to go fuck Pepper Potts.

“At least for the time being, yes,” Tony said. “We’ll want to cover these up. I think everything will go over better, with, well, everyone, if people don’t think I have some sort of hold on you.”

“Do you?”

Tony threw his hands up and Bucky recoiled on accident, defensive maneuvers already planning staging to get him to the nearest exit--

\-- Friday moved the suit to cover him--

“Woah! Stop, stop, no, wait.” Tony said. “Okay, you need to take a chill pill. And you need to stand down.”

Both Bucky and the suit hesitated. Bucky forced himself to a parade rest.

“Cute, Solja Boi,” Tony said. “You need to work on your triggers a little, I can’t have you jumping around like a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

“That saying is a little out of your decade,” Bucky mentioned.

Tony stopped short, gave Bucky a long look, and the corner of his mouth twitched. Like he was surprised, but not quite enough to laugh at Bucky’s bad joke.

“So, yes. Make up artist. She’ll cover and recolor our words,” Tony said. “We’re going to want to spin this very carefully, and right now, you being my soulmate is damned inconvenient. So, we’re going to hold off on that announcement for a bit. At least long enough to get you settled in, because once this goes to trial, we probably won’t be able to hide it longer than that. But that could be months, even years, down the road as the prosecutor preps for the case.”

“All right,” Bucky said, slowly.

“Once she gets here, we’ll take care of this, I’ll find housing for you, yes right here in the Tower, because I don’t think you should be out on the streets, especially once word gets around. And then…”

“Then?”

“We go down and tell the rest of the Avengers a story--” Tony said.

“About?”

“About how you made your way here to turn yourself in,” Tony said. “And you’re going to have to stick with that, because Captain Tightpants is going to want to protect you from the world. You’re his very own special little snowflake.”

“I know,” Bucky said. Because he did know that.

“He will try to talk you out of it, he will try to run every sort of interference possible to keep you out of the spotlight,” Tony said.

“I know.”

“And I--” Tony stopped, licked his lips, and then went on, “I don’t know if there’s any possible way that we can-- do this. Make this thing work. But I will tell you this much, if there’s an ultimatum to give, here’s me, making it. You will stand trial for what you’ve done. Or you will never see me again. I know that’s not a big choice, probably the easiest thing in the world for you to do is walk away--”

Bucky didn’t bother to protest or say anything. He just moved into Tony’s personal space, tipped his chin up, slanted his mouth, and took possession of his soulmate with a searing kiss.

***

Barnes drew Tony into his arms and kissed him. His hands were everywhere on Tony’s back, caressing the back of his neck, threading through his hair. And Tony could swear he heard fucking _music_. He melted into it, letting Bucky take almost all his weight in those strong arms. Relishing the feeling of being the absolute _fucking center_ of someone’s world.

Bells ringing, lights flashing under his eyelids, all of it. Everything he’d always thought was poetic license, hyperbole, bullshit, it was all good goddamn happening.

_If there’s a bright center to the universe, you’re on the planet it’s furthest from._

Tony gasped, and Banes’s tongue swept into his mouth, and everything doubled, trebled. He could have let his legs go out, let Barnes take him to the floor--

No.

“Wait, no--” Tony managed to get in, slid his hands between them, trying not to notice how muscular and smooth, perfect, his soulmate’s chest was. “No.”

Bucky -- and it was _Bucky_ , he was going to have to just deal with that, because there was no way he could look at this man and not call him by his preferred name -- took a step back, keeping his hand on Tony’s elbow, like he knew Tony might have needed the extra support.

“Sorry,” Bucky said.

“Are you?” That came out a little harsher than Tony meant it to.

Bucky’s silver-blue eyes flashed with _something_ , an aching pain that Tony felt sear on his own soul like a brand.

“Am I sorry I kissed you?” Bucky wondered. “Fuck, _no_. I’d kiss you from now to judgement day. And you’d _like_ it.” That was said with some defensive posturing. “What I am sorry for is how fucked up this situation is, where you can’t trust me. Where… the things I fuckin’ did. I can’t make up for them, trial or not. I thought-- I always thought soulmates were supposed to be-- I’m sorry I hurt you so much before I had any damn clue who you were.”

Tony swallowed hard, resisting the urge to lick his lips, to gather up the little taste of Bucky he’d been given. “You know, that’s… that’s on Hydra. My parents, I mean. I read the files, I know-- I know what happened to you.”

Bucky shook his head, and Tony also knew the truth. That no matter how it looked on paper, how clinical and awful it seemed, it was nothing to really knowing. He couldn’t possibly understand what Bucky had been through, how he’d been torn down and built back up, how he’d been twisted and tortured until he believed what Hydra told him was true.

Hell, the US Army had probably already started the brainwashing process; basic training wasn’t much less than torture, molding and shaping men that went, fought, and came home unable to be citizens anymore. Unable to hold a job, keep a relationship, reintegrate into their lives. He’d seen it, up close and personal, and from a distance, all the things that happened in the name of war, and war was just a smokescreen for keeping rich men in power.

Rich men like him.

“Steve’s told me that shit, too,” Bucky said, turning away and staring out the glass doors to the penthouse’s balcony. “That don’t-- it don’t change nothin’. I did those things, and nothing I ever do can make up for it. It-- that blood is on my hands.” He looked down at his hands as if he was having a Lady MacBeth moment, expected to see blood dripping from his fingers to stain the carpet, bright as an accusation. “My guilt don’t bring those people back, though.”

“No, it doesn’t. Tears don’t wash out blood,” Tony said. He knew all about that, though. He knew the weight of the lives he’d taken on his own soul. People who’d told him that what happened with his weapons weren’t his fault, that he just made what people wanted, what the government wanted, that he wasn’t complicit in those _murders_ and _unlawful deaths_ and _civilian casualties_ and _collateral damage_.

_Is this the first time you’ve lost a soldier?_

_We’re not SOLDIERS._

He looked at Bucky, at the way Bucky’s shoulders were straight and his spine was as stiff as iron. He was looking at a soldier, the soldier, if you wanted to be completely literal about it. And that weight, that stain on his soul was just as bad.

“Nothing can change what’s happened,” Tony said. “If you had a choice, or you didn’t have a choice, those people are going to stay dead. And the courts may decide that you’re guilty, that you’re accountable. Or they may decide you’re the longest held POW in history. I don’t know, I can’t say how it’s going to come out.”

Tony stepped up next to his soulmate and reached out. It was harder than he’d thought, much harder than kissing the man.

Offered his hand.

“But we’ll stand up. Together.”

***

Tony straightened his tie, even though he knew it didn’t need it. Watched Bucky watching him fidget.

“It’ll be okay,” Bucky promised, and how was Bucky promising anything, since Bucky couldn’t possibly know. “No, really. Whatever happens, I’m putting myself in the right hands. A jury can-- decide. And then it’ll be over, one way or another. I’ll be judged. I want that. Honestly, I think I fuckin’ need it. I can’t tell what’s right or wrong half the time. Been following orders for three-quarters of a century, and tryin’ just to survive the rest of the time. I ain’t got a moral compass, not so you’d notice. This is a good plan.”

Tony gave Bucky a flat smile, and then changed it to his press-face. He was going to need all his masks for this moment.

“Okay. Go in the other room, I’ll let you know when we’re ready for you.”

There was no way that Rogers and the others were just going to sit the fuck down if Bucky was already in the conference room when they arrived.

So it’d have to be a fucking magician’s reveal, and Tony felt like a cheap charlatan. Presto-chango, look at the world, tilted on its axis.

_Give me a lever long enough and a good fulcrum point, and I can move the world._

Bucky gave Tony’s hand a squeeze, leaned in and kissed his cheek. “We got this.”

We.

_Together_.

Fuck, Tony was so screwed.

He glanced down at his arm, made sure the makeup job wasn’t smudging or leaving marks on his shirt. He didn’t know how long they’d be able to make this work, someone was going to notice something.

Romanoff, at least, was going to know something was up.

Rogers… would probably be too busy freaking out about the return of his long lost BFF to put things together. For a while.

Bucky disappeared into the side room. Tony didn’t bother to sit. He knew he would only be in the chair for less than a minute before he’d be on his feet again, pacing around, drumming his fingers on his thigh, on his sternum. He was restless energy even when he was at his best, and this… this wasn’t it.

Rogers came in first. That wasn’t unusual. Sam just behind him. Wanda and Vision. Romanoff. Rhodey, because truth, this was an Avengers emergency, and also, because Rhodey would fucking put the War Machine suit on and mess Tony the fuck up if Tony didn’t give him the courtesy of a personal admission at the same time everyone else got it.

“Hey sugarbear,” Tony said, and whatever mess his head was, his face must have been even worse.

Rhodey didn’t sit down, he didn’t act mildly interested. He went straight to Tony’s side, absently shoving Rogers aside, and put his arms around Tony in a quick, warm hug.

“The fuck, Tones?” Meant for Tony’s ears alone.

“Long story, sourpatch,” Tony said. “And I only want to tell it once, so… have a seat?”

He waited until everyone was sitting, looking at him with an air of expectations.

“So, uh, let’s just get right down to it, shall we?” Tony asked.

“What’s this about?” That was Rogers, looking fierce and angry and frustrated all at the same time. Because Rogers, that’s why.

“Uh, I found Barnes,” Tony said. “He… uh. Wanted to be found. So--”

There was a cacophony of sound, as everyone tried to talk over everyone else, demands, questions, exclamations.

“ _Shut the fuck. Up_.” Tony barked. “We’re not doing this. I’m gonna tell you the facts, and you’re going to fucking listen. And then. Then I’ll deal with questions? Are we perfectly clear on this. Steve?”

“Where is he?”

“Closer than you think,” Tony said, because he couldn’t resist the urge to be dramatic. “And now I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen. I’ve arranged housing for him, here on the premises.”

“What angle are you playing, Stark?” That was Wanda, who was elbowed not-very-discreetly by Romanoff, which meant that she meant him to see it.

“Funny you should ask. I’d like to introduce you to our other guest,” Tony said. “Meet Jennifer Walters, Attorney at Law.”

Jennifer came in, all nine feet of gorgeous green courtroom queen. She straightened her glasses as she looked over the Avengers, unimpressed.

“Good evening, Avengers,” she said. “I have the honor inform you that in the case of the United States versus The Winter Soldier, the trial to begin in four weeks time.” She gave Tony a quick glance. “Apparently, they want him, pretty bad.”

There was more noise, more protests. Rogers was yelling, and Wanda’s eyes were sparkling red, the way she always followed where Steve led.

Jennifer stepped in front of Tony, her legal briefcase held in her hand like a weapon. “Captain Rogers, you’ve gone up against my cousin a few times, I believe. I wouldn’t try it with a hulk that can actually effectively strategize. You’ll lose, and I will absolutely put you through a window.” She glanced at Wanda. “Or take a page out of someone else’s book, and see if I can put you through the earth’s crust. It’s only eighty stories.”

“Can we not break my building? I just finished fixing it,” Tony said, mildly.

“Just wanting to make my position clear, Tony,” Jennifer said. She didn’t even look angry, just interested. Could she take Rogers out? And not in the fun way.

“You’re putting him on _trial_?”

“No,” Jennifer said. “In fact, I’m defending him. A fact for which you should be grateful.”

“Gratitude comes when you waive your ridiculous fees,” Tony quipped.

“He shouldn’t be on trial at all--”

“Okay, I was getting bored listening to all the shouting,” Bucky said, pushing the door open and walking in. “I turned myself in, Steve. I want this.”

“A trial? Buck, you haven’t done anything wrong!”

“And if that’s really the case,” Jennifer said, putting her hand lightly on Bucky’s arm, “then we will prove it. In court, in public, where no one can question it.” 


	6. Have Your Cake and Eat it, Too

There’d never been a time in his life when Bucky had been given space and freedom. It wasn’t even space and freedom, even now, although it sort of felt like it. Space, yes. Tony had put side an entire suite for Bucky’s housing.

A regular bedroom for him, a guest room, a library (with shelves stocked from the best seller lists from the last decade), a bathroom that could practically have served as its own swimming pool, an actual swimming pool off the balcony, kitchen, dining room, three public rooms -- one of which held a small piano, and Bucky couldn’t figure out why he’d need that, honestly -- and a small gym with fitness equipment that would hold up to the sort of abuse that a super soldier could dish out.

“You’re welcome to come down to the Avenger’s floor at any time, or any public area of the Tower -- there are shops and whatnot -- so long as you’re accompanied by an Avenger. If you want to leave the Tower, you need to clear it with me, and I’ll assign a babysitter.”

Which was to say, Bucky could not leave the Tower with Steve, probably. Not a bad idea. Bucky nodded to show he understood more than what was being said.

“You’ve got a clothing allowance, so buy some new threads, whatever necessities you want, and a stipend, and if you’ll let me -- or Friday, say hi Friday -- know where we can find it, someone will go collect your… things.”

Bucky snorted. As if. “Yeah, no I think that stuff’s good right where it is.”

“You may as well tell someone,” Tony said. “Otherwise, you’re hiding things and that’s not going to look good for your day in court. Friday will have your schedule in the morning, you have basic internet access -- which will be monitored, and I advise not trying to hack around it. I don’t care about what porn you watch, and neither does anyone else, but no trying to contact hit men, or Hydra.”

“Well, there goes my breakfast plans,” Bucky said, deadpan, and was pleased when Tony actually barked out a laugh, and then shook his head.

“Stop that.”

“Makin’ jokes?”

“Trying to make me like you, it won’t work,” Tony said.

“Aw, doll, if you like me, that’s entirely your own problem,” Bucky said. Which was part of the problem, wasn’t it?

“Hilarious,” Tony said. “So if there’s nothing else you need, I’ll get out of your hair and let you settle in.”

“If I asked to go to the coffee shop in the next day or so, and see what I can do to help, who would you send with me?”

“Viz,” Tony said. “Which means you’ll probably get a side order of the Scarlet Witch. It should make Steve feel better, since you’ll have your very own Team Cap mascot with you.”

“I literally have no idea what you’re talking about,” Bucky said.

“Yeah, well, better catch up on the political climate around here, Buckaroo. Ignorance doesn’t count as an excuse. Ask Friday for the relevant files, your clearance level for that sort of information is Blue.”

“What--”

Tony was gone before Bucky could say goodbye or ask any more questions. He sighed, then addressed Friday. “What’s blue clearance?”

“Slightly higher than the information you can find on the internet, Mr. Barnes,” Friday said, somewhat snippy.

“Great. I’ll take all the files on all the Avengers, my lawyer, the prosecuting attorney, any information about the Starks, Hydra, and SHIELD that are available to me,” Bucky said. “What’s the protocol for requesting an outing? A list of shops and my spending allowance might be good, too. Also, food? I have very high nutritional needs. When I was with Hydra, they kept me to almost seven thousand calories per day.” More if action were eminent.

Bucky found the tablet that Tony had left for him in the library, along with a laptop and phone and all the appropriate chargers.

He probably shouldn’t have been surprised at what the monthly allowance was -- it was Tony Stark, of course he had an unrealistic view of what a normal person spent in a month on non-housing related expenses.

“Miss Friday?”

There was silence, but it was silence with intent. Bucky wasn’t sure how he knew the difference, but he did.

“Is there a flower shop in the Tower?”

“Floor three, south east corner.”

“Thank you, do you have a number?”

“I’ll put the call through for you.”

“Appreciate it,” Bucky said, and then had a long discussion with the florist, and from the florist’s shop, he moved on to two other gift boutiques.

By the time he was done with that, someone was knocking on his door. Steve, probably. Giving him some courtesy, or maybe waiting to see if Bucky would go to him, and running out of patience.

Bucky scratched his jaw. “Who’s there?”

“Captain Rogers,” Friday told him, and Bucky nodded.

“Figured that,” he said. “Might as well get it over with. Assuming I’m allowed guests?”

“Any Avenger can visit without prior consent unless you tell me you’re unavailable. Other non-residents must be cleared, preferably with a thirty-six hour notice.”

“Great. Add Amy from the coffee shop to that list, please.”

He opened the door.

He had to admit, Steve looked good. Really good. Healthy, clean, not banged up. It’d been a while since Bucky had seen Steve where he wasn’t bleeding or filthy, or both. It seemed a perpetual state for him, honestly.

“Hey pal,” Bucky said, and his voice cracked, and then Steve’s arms were around him in a monster hug. Bucky could feel him shaking underneath.

“You’re alive,” Steve said, as if this was news. “You’re alive and you know me.”

“Yeah, I’m done runnin’, punk,” Bucky said. “Gonna face the music.”

“You don’t have to,” Steve told him.

“I do have to,” Bucky said. “I need-- I can’t live like this. I can’t change my face and my name and disappear again. I’m not gonna move to some non-extradition country and pretend that’s fair to anyone. I’m gonna accept judgement.”

Steve scoffed. “Like that ever ends well. They’re gonna try to pin everything little thing on you. And I’m not going to let you rot in some hellhole like the Raft.”

Bucky licked his lips, felt the rough skin under his tongue where he’d been biting at it. “Yeah, you are,” Bucky said. “If that’s what a court of law decides, then that’s what’s gonna happen. My choice, pal. Let me have it.”

“Allow him the dignity of his choice,” Steve said, and when he pulled back, his eyes were wet. “That’s what Peggy said about you, after you-- well, I thought you’d died. You should never have been there, on that train. I should have known, I should have--”

“If wishes were horses, Stevie, beggars would ride,” Bucky said. “Come in, stop standing out in the hall.”

Steve probably had some agenda, or something he wanted to say, or probably even start considering plots to get Bucky out of the country and he stopped dead in the living room, mouth opening slightly. “I gotta admit, Buck, this is not what I expected Stark to do for you.”

“He’s really not the enemy,” Bucky said, because he knew that much. He knew that Steve and Tony hadn’t been getting along. “Really, I wouldn’t complain even if it was a cell.”

“Could you?”

“What?”

“Complain,” Steve said. “After everything you’ve been through--”

 _You don’t even know the half of it, pal, and I’m not going to be the one to tell you._ “If you’re asking if I know my own mind, if I can trust myself… who can? I’m more in my right mind than I’ve been in a long while. Am I sane? As much as I can be. Semi-stable, hundred year old war vet. It’s better than some people. Tony’s right to put a guard on me. All it takes is someone sayin’ the goddamn words and everything’ll be lost. Again.”

“So it’s _Tony_ now?”

“It was _Howard_ and _Peggy_ back in the day,” Bucky pointed out, trying to divert Steve from the point. “He’s tryin’ to do right in a fucked up situation. Try an’ cut him some slack, wouldja?”

“Tony can cut himself all the slack he needs,” Steve said, hold up his hands defensively. “I don’t want to see you in another cell for stuff that wasn’t your fault.”

“Believe me, it ain’t ideal,” Bucky said. “We’ll figure it out.”

***

“What the hell is this, Fri?” Tony demanded. He was staring down at the fancy bouquet of flowers, arranged in a futuristic, sleek vase, surrounded by other gifts, wrapped in gold and red paper. Like Christmas had come early, the entire get up was outside the door of his workshop.

“They’re for you, boss,” Friday told him, like he might have missed that. Even the tag on the flowers said _To Tony Stark_.

Which meant they weren’t from Rhodey, since Rhodey tended to send him gifts to _Mr. Stank._ He was never going to live that one down, and it was fine, because Rhodey only remembered that sort of shit because he loved Tony.

“So, I’m not hallucinating them, that’s a start, I guess,” Tony said. “So, now that we’ve established there are literally flowers and presents here, can I ask what the occasion is?”

“I believe in these cases, they’re gifts from Mr. Barnes to express a sense of gratitude for housing and care,” Friday said, primly. “Perhaps you should read the card.”

“There’s a card?”

“There’s a card,” Friday told him.

And there was. Bucky’s handwriting was crabbed and leaned backward, like he didn’t have the best control with that artificial arm to write things. That was an idea. “Friday, pull up all the specs we have on Barnes’ arm, open a new project, call it Gimme a Hand. Don’t know if there’s anything Hydra-ish in that. Don’t really need to find out the hard way that it’s crawled off and strangled someone in their sleep or anything.”

The card didn’t say much, just a quick thank you, but Tony was oddly warmed by it.

There were people who would say it was cheating, buying Tony gifts with Tony’s own money, except that allowance was Barnes’ and he could have done anything he wanted to do with it, and what he apparently wanted to do was send Tony some gifts.

He shoved the little mail cart into the workshop and set about opening his gifts.

The flowers were nice; honestly, he wasn’t sure anyone had ever sent him flowers before in his life, except for the ones that came to the house after the death of his parents--

He reached out and plucked one of the blooms from the vase and crushed it.

The only time he’d ever gotten flowers before-- was because of what Barnes had done? Had murdered his parents, and now he thought he could just send flowers. He could be Tony’s soulmate. The hell?

Looking at the smashed and torn flower on the floor, Tony ached with guilt and anger at the same time.

“It does not appear to be poisoned, boss,” Friday chirped.

Tony considered indulging himself in the rest of the tantrum, destroying the bouquet and the gifts, screaming and yelling to exhaust himself. It wouldn’t help, he’d done it more than once and all it meant was there was a mess to clean up and a vague sense of shame.

He left the flowers alone.

“Clean this up,” he told U, who rolled over with the broom and dustpan. In mere moments, Tony’s fit of pique was nothing but a crumpled flower in the wastebin, the scent of crushed petals in the air, and that sense that Tony was nothing but a child. But no one else could see that, so it didn’t matter.

Dum-E poked his clawed face around the corner, peering in the trashcan, and then beeping.

“Yeah, it’s okay, bud,” Tony said. “Daddy’s just having a hissy fit. It’s nothing you did.”

He considered the rest of the gifts, wrapped and fancy.

“Boss, I’d suggest at least opening the biggest package. Scans say it’s likely to rot, if you leave it,” Friday said.

Tony sighed. “Right. Perishables.”

The box contained a half dozen blueberry muffins, the kind with the large sugar crystals. Fragrant and lovely and tempting.

“God damn it, Barnes,” Tony said. He hadn’t actually gotten a blueberry muffin the other day, given that they’d destroyed the shop in the process (okay, he had destroyed the shop and Steve had helped) of meeting.

Another card, another scrawl. _Personally I hate blueberries. Been getting these my whole life hoping to meet you._

Tony’s legs went out, and it was really only luck that the desk chair was under him. As it was, he rolled back until he hit U, who beeped at him, offended.

He might have dismissed the whole thing, except how many times had he ordered a cheese danish, hoping to start a conversation? And he liked cheese danishes. What must it have been like, especially with Barnes? Grew up in the Great Depression where money wasn’t something he could throw away. He’d have had to have eaten them, liking them or not, once he paid for it.

And then, to finally have it happen for him…

To turn around and see Tony Stark?

Was it a great disappointment? Or an inevitable sense of failure, of not being good enough? Or guilt? Guilt was a feeling Tony had a lot of familiarity with. He and Guilt were old friends. Personally, Tony thought it should have been on the list of seven deadly sins because he’d done more harm trying to make up for things than he’d ever done from Pride or Sloth or Lust.

Guilt was his biggest enemy, his most driving motivation.

It _sucked_ , and Tony didn’t really like the idea of someone else feeling the same way. Even if it was someone who should feel guilty.

But should he, that was the question; Barnes didn’t have a choice about what had happened, did he? Brainwashed, tortured, used as a weapon.

Sent to kill his own friends, as a test, maybe?

Ton had never considered what it must have been like -- as Barnes, realizing what he’d _done_. And suddenly it didn’t matter if Barnes might have deserved to feel guilty. It was obvious that he did; that he felt guilty about being tortured and turned into a monster.

He’d probably fought with it, the whole time, until everything that existed was pain. Tony swallowed hard.

“Fri, what’s he doing now?”

Friday didn’t bother to ask who. “He had a visit from Captain Rogers,” she reported.

“He’s alone now, though?”

“Yes, boss.”

“Yeah, okay, this is completely stupid, but ask him if he wants to come down and have lunch with me,” Tony said.

“Are we having lunch?”

“Order something Friday, you know the drill. Feed me, Seymour.”

There was a long pause, and Tony absently ate one of the blueberry muffins while he waited, poking at the design schematic for Barnes’ old arm. “We have to start entirely new with this, build it from the ground up, I’m going to need some scans,” Tony mumbled, and then--

“He’s on his way, boss,” Friday said. “I placed an order for sandwiches and soups from the deli.”

“Thanks, you’re the best,” Tony told her.

“One tries,” she replied.

Tony licked the crumbs off his fingers, spinning the diagram with quick gestures. “Yeah, scrap all this--”

Tony was self-aware enough to know that -- had Barnes been anyone else but who he was -- he might have ignored guests and the knock at his workshop door that spelled food, in favor of the amazing science he was looking at. He didn’t much care for Hydra, but whoever built the arm was a genius, and Tony could appreciate genius, even when it was used for evil.

Science didn’t have morality.

People had morality.

The neural interface alone could be adapted to make blind people see, to reconnect areas of the brain after traumatic head injuries, to --

“Huh, that’s interesting,” Tony said, pushing away from the schematic. “Come on in, hot stuff, and take a look at this.”

“What am I lookin’ at?”

“Evidence, I think,” Tony said. “I’ll have to dig into it, quite literally, but I-- might be able to actually prove brainwashing, based on how this arm is connected. It’s crimped down on several memory path formatting, and is controlling the flow of key brain functions. You are leashed by that thing. It’s probably only the knock off serum you’ve got -- and it’s not really a knock off, my dad made it, it’s pretty damn good. New and improved serum, honestly -- that you’ve been able to come back this far from it. Your brain’s forming new pathways to get around the roadblocks.”

“Which means--”

“The arm has to come off,” Tony said. “The sooner, the better. I don’t think it’s as easy as ‘you’re cured’ of your programming, I’ll really want to talk to a neuro specialist about that, but it should, at least, stop rewriting any progress _you’re_ making on your own.”

“And then what?”

“I’ll build you a new one,” Tony promised.

“You will, just like, that?”

“Hey, I have a full workshop here. You should see what I can do with a box of spare parts,” Tony said, and it wasn’t even bragging, it was a fact.

“I meant-- I wasn’t doubtin’ that you could,” Barnes said. “I was just wonderin’ why you _would_.”

“You don’t know me very well, yet,” Tony said, “So I’ll let that pass. I build things, Barnes. That’s what I do. We can remake him, faster, stronger. We have the technology.” When Barnes continued to look blank, Tony sighed. “Yet another super soldier who doesn’t appreciate my humor because they don’t have any references. It’s sad. Friday, put cultural awareness night on Barnes’ calendar, would you? You know the jokes I make.”

“Of course, Boss.”


	7. That's Just Gravy

The rap at the door was accompanied by a vague whoosh sound and a six foot purple guy with a brilliantly tacky yellow cloak slid through Bucky’s wall like it wasn’t even there. If he hadn’t specifically asked for an escort, Bucky might have already been rolling for a weapon.

As it was, Bucky’s palm itched for a pistol grip, his fingers ached for a blade.

“Uh, can you not?”

“Mr. Barnes,” the Vision said, floating over the floor like walking was too damn hard. “You requested an escort and--” 

“The door.” Bucky pointed. “Go out it and come back in and then we’ll finish this conversation.”

“Oh, I just assumed, you asked--”

“Out.”

The Vision sighed and floated back through the wall. 

“Ain’t there nothin’ you can do about that?” Bucky demanded of Friday.

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Barnes,” Friday said, and she sounded mildly exasperated, like the Vision was her not-entirely-socially-acceptable cousin. “He’s just like that.”

The Vision knocked on the door and actually waited while Bucky considered if it were possible to climb out the window of this damn place and hit the ground running. It probably wasn’t, and he already knew he wouldn’t be able to stay away. The damn soulmate pull was stronger than anything he’d ever imagined. 

He almost wondered if he’d gotten the full dose, or a double dose, since Tony didn’t seem to be struggling with any urges to see more of Bucky.

Or maybe he was just less green about it.

Bucky sighed. None of that solved the problem as it was, and he opened the door.

“Greetings, Mr. Barnes,” the Vision said. “May I come in?”

“Don’t know how I can stop ya,” Bucky said, but he stood back anyway and let the Vision float in.

“I am still learning,” the Vision said. “You issued the request, and I took it as an invitation.”

“Yeah, well, I get that,” Bucky said, and he’d dealt with a lot of weird shit back with Hydra, so a pink and yellow dude who floated through the walls shouldn’t have been so shocking. “Use the door, that’s what we make ‘em for, and wait until I say come in. You couldda floated in on me jerkin’ it, and that would have been embarrassin’ for everyone.”

“Jerk-- oh.” The synthoid couldn’t blush, or at least, the Vision didn’t seem to, but the way his eyes darted around, Bucky thought he was doing the mechanical equivalent. Score one for the human dude. 

“Good t’ see you know how to use the internet.”

“Mr. Stark has been most thorough as far as my education is concerned,” the Vision said.

Bucky had to practically chew a hole in his lip not to ask if the Vision had walked in on Tony-- and then to ask if he knew what Tony thought of the whole mess. Prodding Tony’s friends for a clue wasn’t fair to either Tony or the friend.

“Right,” Bucky said. “So, given that you’re here, I’m assumin’ I’m allowed out.”

“As long as you do not make an attempt to escape,” the Vision said. 

“Do you attract attention, floatin’ around like that?” Bucky wanted to get out for a bit, before he went stir-crazy, but he didn’t relish the idea of photographers and gawkers following them around.

“No,” the Vision said, and he stepped down from his hovering, the image of him rippling like a stone thrown on the water and when it stopped, he was an almost perfectly ordinary looking man, taller even than Steve, with fluffy blond hair. “I do not attract attention outside the Stark Building.”

“Handy trick,” Bucky said. “You wanna teach it to me, some time?”

“No.”

“That’s fair,” Bucky said. He grabbed a hoodie and a jacket; after so many years in cryo, he might have imagined that he’d have been too warm all the time, but his quarters were set to just below eighty degrees and he was still just barely comfortable. 

“Mr. Stark would like me to remind you that, if possible, he’d like you to submit to some lab work,” the Vision said, walking through the halls like he was just folk, and pushing the elevator button.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “I hear it.” Didn’t mean he was going to listen to it. He was damn tired of Hydra and their needles and tests. He was tired of submitting to the will of people who viewed him like a lab experiment instead of a man. 

Also, if he had to be honest, and if he wasn’t going to be honest with anyone else, he should probably be honest with himself; he wanted Tony to ask him, rather than sending him messages.

He hadn’t seen his soul mate in almost a week, once Tony had disabled several key parts of the arm. He’d said that should keep Hydra’s works from gumming up Bucky’s brain and he’d get back to him on a replacement, but so far, Bucky hadn’t heard anything.

It was hard to know if Tony was working, or if he was avoiding Bucky.

Whatever. Bucky had other things to do today.

Down in the lobby, the dark-haired girl, Wanda, detached herself from the wall. “Steve asked me if I’d keep an eye on you,” she said, although the way she twined her fingers with the Vision’s, Bucky wasn’t sure what her motive was.

“You’re the Scarlet Witch,” Bucky said.

“That’s what _they_ call me,” she said. “The same way they call you the Winter Soldier. Wanda, or if you can’t manage that, Miss Maximoff is fine.”

Bucky nodded. “You any good with a hammer and nails, Miss Maximoff?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“We’re going to help Amy repair the coffee shop,” Bucky said. “I’m just wondering if you’re gonna be strawbossin’ or actually helping.”

“Why would I pick up a hammer?” she asked, blinking. “I can just _fix_ things.”

“Wonder why you didn’t, then,” Bucky said, under his breath, and the look that Maximoff snapped at him was full of anger. He wasn’t sure that, if they were left to their own devices, she wouldn’t throw down, right there. Quick tempers, these Avengers, the lot of them. Not even discounting Tony. Easily baited, quick to rise to the occasion.

He wondered if it was bad training, or a fundamental difference between a hero and a villain. Bucky was slow to anger, he was a planner. You didn’t get a target by running around, screaming, while brandishing a rifle. You _planned_. You were patient.

“I too, can be of some assistance, Mr. Barnes,” and the Vision looked legit concerned, and also eager.

“Great, maybe we’ll get this whipped into shape in no time,” Bucky said.

***

“Hey, Fri, baby girl, darling--”

“Boss, you haven’t slept at all in three days, I am not going to make any more coffee. In fact, you are tempting me to summon Miss Potts if I can’t get you to lay down and take a nap.”

“Worry wart,” Tony said, rolling in his eyes. “Anyway, it’s done, if you’d please summon Mr. Barnes to my workshop so we can do a fitting, that’d be great.”

“Mr. Barnes is currently not in the building.”

“Really? Where’d he wander off too, I just saw him--”

“You saw him a week ago, boss,” Friday said. You’ve been _working_.”

“Huh. Okay,” Tony said. He backed up until his knees hit the little sofa he kept down in the workshop for power naps. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt if I just… lay down for a bit.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea, boss,” Friday said, and her tone was so dry they could have bottled that shit and used it as an absorbent. Washcloth in a bottle. 

Tony sat down, and then sitting turned into laying, and-- “Let Barnes know his arm’s ready, come on down as soon as he get--” Tony yawned hugely. “-back.”

He didn’t really remember falling asleep, but that was okay, because sleep was the enemy of productivity and he tried to avoid it as much as possible.

But he felt warm and dark and drowsy, comfortable. “How long has be been like this--”

“Only a few hours,” Friday was saying, and Tony thought about telling her to be quiet, but couldn’t seem to find the energy. If she kept talking, he might wake up all the way, but if she stopped talking, well, then he’d sink right down--

He was being carried, a princess style rescue. Cradled against a warm chest, and held almost perfectly level. “E..whu?”

“It’s all right, Tony,” someone said. Someone he knew, someone he trusted implicitly. He didn’t even know why he knew that, and he couldn’t have put a name to the person at the moment to save his life. Words were hard. Ridiculous things, nouns. He snuggled into the cradle of the man’s chest and let himself drift off again. “I’ve got you.”

Tony roused himself a little bit more, when the person carrying him nudged him a little. “Tell Friday to let us in?”

“F’i?”

“Yes, boss,” Friday said. “Thank you, Mr. Barnes.”

Barnes? Tony didn’t quite struggle, he was still too sleepy and too comfortable for that, but he did feel his heart thud extra hard one time. 

“Shh, it’s all right,” Barnes said. “Just gonna put you to bed, sweetheart.”

Tony opened one eye, slitted most of the way closed. Too much light. But he did confirm they were in his penthouse. Again. A moment later, Barnes was laying him down on his bed. His shoes were tugged off and thumped to the floor. Followed by his belt, the contents of his pockets were dumped on the bedside table. 

“You are filthy,” Barnes said. “You gonna wake all the way up if I wash your hands and face?”

“.. you staying here?”

“I don’t really think we’re there yet,” Barnes said, and he brushed hair out of Tony’s face. 

“If I’m not going to get you dirty, then what’s the point?” Tony was most of the way awake now, but still stubbornly leaving his eyes closed.

“Uh-huh,” Barnes said. “Look, sleep. We’ll talk about it later.”

And there was a soft brush of lips against Tony’s forehead, like being tucked in so long ago by his mother that he could barely remember it. Back before he was sent off to boarding school, and “Maria, stop coddling the boy.”

Before that, when he was just a child, and his mom loved him.

“Good night, Tony,” Barnes said.

It was on the tip of his tongue to wake all the way up, to ask Barnes to stay. Not-- not that way, but as his soul mate and to keep Tony warm and safe and comfortable and loved.

But the door closed and the opportunity slipped away. Tony turned over, stuffed his hand under the pillow -- take _that_ , clean sheets -- and went back to sleep.

***

“So, biomechanics isn’t entirely my field,” Tony admitted, after opening up the case and showing Bucky the new arm, laying in its special foam cushion. “More about wearables, myself, with some bio-integration, like the nano-tech that lets me control the suit, those were injected-- long story, you don’t care, I can tell. But-- you’re very lucky, in that I do happen to be on speed dial with one of the smartest people in the world. Friday, can you buzz the Princess, please.”

“You know a Princess?” Bucky wasn’t trying to be difficult, he just didn’t realize that there were still princesses in the world at all -- well, aside from the British Monarchy, which as far as most people knew, were just figure heads. Shows what most people knew. Which was to say, only as much as certain other people wanted them to see.

“Technically, I know several, and I even had a bit of an affair with-- again, you’re distracting me, stop doing that,” Tony said. He rubbed at his arm, absently. Despite having the makeup artist provide several waterproof templates that they could simply stick and go, Bucky noticed that Tony hadn’t been wearing his.

Neither had Bucky, if he had to be honest. He just wore long sleeves and hoped no one asked any awkward questions.

The soul words, it turned out, didn’t really like being covered up, and Bucky found that the damn thing itched less if he didn’t have the makeup on. So, only when necessary. The rest of the time, he could brush off wearing long sleeves on not wanting people to gawk at his arm.

They were, he decided, looking down at the disembodied limb, still going to stare.

This one wasn’t bright, reflective silver, at least. Mostly black with some gold inlay, it wouldn’t show up like a damn spotlight if Bucky tried to go out. 

“It’s beautiful,” Bucky said. 

“Thank you, Mister Barnes,” a crisp, female voice said. “Aesthetically pleasing, efficient, and certainly better than other designs I have seen.”

“Yeah, your highness, we know you love to show off,” Tony said, a fond smile touching his lips. “How’s your brother?”

“Annoying, as always,” she said. 

“So, this is Princess Shuri, of Wakanda, head of the scientific development team for her nation,” Tony said. “She’s like fourteen, or something, but I always say to trust in youth, because they aren’t at all set in their ways.”

“Excuse me, I am fifteen,” Shuri said.

“From my perspective, you may as well be six,” Tony told her. “Youth always seems so… very young to those of us who are old.”

Bucky snorted. “You’re younger than me, hotshot.”[]

Tony waved that away as irrelevant, and it probably was. Age was just a number. 

“So, step on out where I can see you,” Tony said, and the image of a girl, thick hair braided back and wrapped around her head like a crown, stepped into the room. She wasn’t real, a holograph of blue and yellow light for the most part. Bucky couldn’t see too many details, but she was wearing a light colored skirt, shoes with laces that made bows at her ankles, and a tee, covering the whole thing with a translucent jacket that -- for whatever reason -- put Bucky in mind of a lab coat. “We’re getting ready to do the install.”

“Then it is good that you called,” Shuri said. “Because I fear you would do it wrong, Mr. Stark.”

Tony shook his head. “I love this kid, she’s the future, you’re looking at the future right there.”

“I been lookin’ at the future my whole life, starin’ with your dad at the Stark Expo back in the 40s. I still ain’t got my flying car.”

“Oh, well, if it is flying vehicles you wish, you should come and visit, Mr. Barnes. There is no need for you to remain in such a primitive nation,” Shuri said.

“Stop trying to steal him,” Tony said. “I need him. For stuff. Also, he’s on trial, you can’t have him until the United States government is done with him.”

“Uhhh, in that case, never,” Shuri said. “I have read the reports.”

Bucky was torn between feeling smug and happy that Tony had said that he needed Bucky, and at the same time, worried about the trial. Shuri wasn’t far wrong, the US legal system was ugly, and tended to be long winded. He could, theoretically, be on trial for the remainder of his life.

And that didn’t even start to cover what would happen to him if he was found guilty.

Life in prison wasn’t a joke when one’s life was longer than most. Maybe they’d go with time already served, having been in a Hydra cryotank for most of the last seventy years. At least two life sentences.

Or, if they found him guilty of treason--

“Mr. Barnes, if I might have your full attention,” Shuri said, hands on her hips like some scolding librarian. He couldn’t help a smile, she looked rather a lot like his baby sister when she’d been up in his face about something.

“Sorry, Princess,” Bucky said. He made a gesture at the arm. “Are you sure you all want t’ do this, given as I’m about to be on trial for my life.”

Shuri glanced at Tony, who nodded. “The work, the hard part, Mr. Barnes, has already been done. This machine, well, I would very much like to see it functional and used for its intended purpose.”

“Digging under her polite veneer of someone who desperately wants other people to take her seriously -- no, no, don’t glare at me, Princess, you’re the one who talks like you studied English from a Dickens’ novel -- we both like to play with our shiny toys.”

“He is rude,” Shuri said. “But he is not wrong.”

“Besides, you’re going to be acquitted of all charges,” Tony said blithely, picking the arm up out of the case. “So, sit down and let me poke you with things.”

Bucky did as he was told, but spent most of the time they were working on him wondering -- had Tony meant to flirt with him, or was he just like that? He let the two scientists chatter above his head, slipping into the very familiar role of scientific experiment, a creature somewhat less interesting than a white lab rat. 

He’d been doing that most of his life, after all.

“There, make a fist, please--”

Bucky kept enough of his attention on the present to follow instructions, to give feedback as required, but slid off into a daydream where Tony did care if he was acquitted, where he was welcome back into the Tower, not as a parolee or a prisoner, but as a partner.

He was just getting to the interesting part of the fantasy where Tony drew him into a lushly appointed bedroom to kiss him, when--

“We’re all done, then,” Tony said, tapping a few more commands out onto his display, and the arm whirred softly.

Not the clang and clash of gears that it had used to be, a sound that often felt to Bucky, and to a lesser degree, the Winter Soldier, like screams.

But a simple, soft whirr.

“Holy cow,” he said, flexing his fingers, and the hand felt almost as real as his right. There was sensation, not just hot/cold and pressure. He found himself rubbing the metal palm against his trousers, feeling the soft denim.

“Yeah, it’s pretty nice. Keep it in good shape, don’t go jerking off with it just yet, we’ll want to run some tests on that, but shoo, shoo, have lunch, go fondle a kitten or something.”

“Thank you, Tony. Princess.”

“You are most welcome, Mr. Barnes. I will have Stark give me your contact information, as I will have many, many questions for you. In the meanwhile, use it as much as possible and let us know if there are any problems.”

“Yes, ma’am, I will.”


	8. Cry Over Spilled Milk

Bucky leaned against the pillar. Based on the architectural layout of the room, there was absolutely no need for a pillar, but Bucky had decided that someone put them in there for one of two purposes; to lean against while watching someone else work out, or to give Cap something to knock down when the punching bag wasn’t cutting it anymore.

Since Steve was cheerfully beating a heavy duty bag to death, he obviously didn’t need the pillar to get his aggression out, at least not that morning.

“Hey Stevie,” Bucky said, waiting until the exact wrong moment to interrupt the punch-jab and dodge maneuver that Steve was conducting.

Steve whirled around, just like he was supposed to, and the bag almost knocked him over on the rebound.

“You keep fallin’ for that one, one of these days, someone’s gonna take your head clean off,” Bucky concluded.

“Not today, jerk,” Steve said.

Bucky plucked up one of Steve’s hands, examined the job he’d done taping his fingers. “Good to see someone finally taught you how to box like a civilized human being.”

“Sharon,” Steve said. “Er, Agent Thirteen. I think you met her. Well, fought with her, really.”

“The blond?”

“Yeah, that’s her,” Steve said.

Smashed her through a table, if Bucky was remembering correctly. “She’s doing okay, then?”

Steve actually blushed, ducking his chin a little. “We go out, from time to time. She’s awful busy, what with all the restructuring at SHIELD, and everything.”

Bucky’s eyebrows went up. “You’re dating? That’s… that’s good, pal, I--”  _Want you to be dating, want you to have a life. Everything I saw, everything I’ve seen, someone ought to have something that just worked out._  “Can’t imagine she’s got a friend.”

Steve laughed, briefly. “If you’re looking to double up, maybe you could ask Nat.”

“That ship sailed a long time ago, pal,” Bucky told him. “We knew each other, back in the day. I don’t think either of us wants to go ‘round that way again.”

Steve scowled at that; Nat obviously hadn’t told him about her days in the Red Room, and while Bucky didn’t blame her at all for not wanting to share, he also recognized Steve’s  _sometimes my teammates don’t tell me things_ bullshit face. If Steve didn’t play things quite so close to the vest himself, Bucky might have more sympathy.

Not that Bucky wasn’t lying through his teeth about wanting to double up. He didn’t want to go anywhere with anyone that wasn’t Tony.

But Steve didn’t need to know that just yet, and this was a good distraction. “So, uh, Stark and a friend of his built me a new arm, and said ‘go forth and give us good data,’” Bucky said, waggling the new, dark metal fingers at Steve. “Want to arm wrestle?”

“I don’t know that breaking your arm is a good first experiment, Buck,” Steve said.

“That sounds like someone taking the coward’s route,” Bucky said, letting his mouth draw up in a smug grin. “Winner by default.”

“I didn’t say I was defaulting on the match,” Steve nitpicked. “I was just saying Stark probably isn’t going to be very happy with you, if you break that thing right away.”

“You break it, you bought it? What, fancy Captain America doesn’t have a salary to match that spangly uniform?”

“It’s not really a uniform anymore, it’s armor,” Steve said.  _All hail the pedant,_ Bucky thought. But he was leading Steve right where he wanted him to go, so that was okay.

“Come on, Steve,” Bucky wheedled. “I need to test it out and you know that nothing around here is gonna go the distance.”

“You’d be surprised, really. The gym’s fairly well equipped, there’s a lot of us who are somewhat stronger than human normal,” Steve hesitated, then, “fine, fine, if you’ll stop whining.”

It took them slightly longer than expected to find a surface to use; the kitchen table, for instance, was just not going to withstand the pressure of them using it for leverage, and by the time they’d decided on one of Banner’s workshop benches, most of the Avengers had heard about the little challenge, and were gathering up to witness.

More than Bucky expected, really.

He knew Wanda, a little, from their day fixing the coffee shop, and the Vision, of course. Steve’s friend Sam, who had a cute little smirk going on and who was trash talking Bucky with Steve. Nat, who didn’t talk much, just watched carefully over the edge of her tea cup.

But there was also a practical-looking woman with her hair in a bun that introduced herself as  _Maria Hill, thanks asshole, you put me out of a job and now I have to work with this bunch._  Bucky reminded himself to ask later what, exactly, he’d done to her. And then there were a few people that Tony called Avenger’s Adjacents; a boy named Peter Parker, the pilot of the War Machine armor, and not one, but two of the shrinking/growing fighters -- Scott and Hope.

“This is more than I expected,” Steve said, shaking his head. “But it’s you all over. Can’t do anything without making it a show.”

“Says the guy not putting his damn arm up,” Bucky said, settling in the chair.

“I’ll take winner,” said a familiar voice, and Bucky turned to watch his lawyer walk in, all green goddess wearing purple workout clothes. “I’m glad I didn’t miss it.”

“Ms. Walters,” Bucky said, nodding his head. “Didn’t know you’d come by.”

“Tony’s putting me up while I work on your case,” she said. “And gossip travels fast with this crew.”

Nat’s expression perked up as soon as Jennifer came on the scene, and she pulled out her phone, tapping frantically.

“What are you doing?” Sam wondered, peering over her shoulder.

“Making a betting pool,” she said. “This just got interesting.”

“We can all get in on the action, if someone wants to find out who the strongest Avenger is,” War Machine said. “Since Hulk and Thor are off having crazy adventures somewhere else.”

“I’m not officially on the team,” Jennifer said, “but I’ll wrestle you anytime, Colonel Rhodes.”

There were some whistling and cat-calls at that.

“Right,” Steve said, and he pulled his stool up to the table, offering Bucky his hand. “Best man win, and all that.”

“Left hand, idiot,” Tony yelled from his position, which was mostly behind his cell phone. “I don’t need data on the serum, just the arm.”

Steve commented where Tony could stick his data, as well as the new arm, and Bucky almost lost his concentration, imagining that. Still, Steve swapped over to his left hand, and they met palms with a smack.

“I have five hundred on Barnes,” Tony said to Nat, and Nat dutifully entered the information into her cell.

“Cheapskate,” Bucky said, then focused all his attention on Steve. “Ready?”

“Steady,” Steve said.

“Go.”

For a long moment, nothing seemed to happen. Bucky’s elbow stayed right where it was, there was no clicking or whirring of plates and vent dumps. There was just pressure. A HUD popped up along the corner of his eye -- _when the hell had they installed that?_ \-- and Bucky read off the amount of pounds per square inch that Steve was pumping out. There were readings and angles, all of which calculated out nicely.

Bucky pushed.

Steve pushed back, and there was straining sounds of breathing.

Stitches popped on Steve’s shirt as his bicep bulged up, and Bucky pushed.

“Holy hell,” Sam Wilson whistled under his breath as Steve’s sleeve practically exploded.

Bucky pushed.

“Come on, Barnes, I got five hundred riding on this,” Tony said.

Bucky  _pushed_.

And suddenly the back of Steve’s hand slammed into the workbench. A flutter of yellow pinged up in the HUD. “Tony?”

“Huh, what’s that, Klondike Bar?”

“There’s an alert popped up on the arm,” Bucky reported.

“Oh, hell, hang on,” Tony said, and he was right there, practically straddling Bucky’s thigh to insert a little cable into-- something near the top of the shoulder. “Yeah, okay, I’m gonna put the kibosh on you going a round with She-Hulk. It’s not the arm, per se, it’s the stress point in the shoulder. We’re going to need to reinforce that, if you’re going up against Captain Tight Pants here on a regular basis.”

“I’m not going to fight Bucky,” Steve protested.

“Doesn’t matter what your intentions are; road to hell and all that,” Tony said. “I’m saying, more strain like this is going to pop his arm right off the side of his body, and no one’s going to be happy with that.”

“In an actual fight situation,” Bucky said, easily enough, “I wouldn’t exert pressure like that. No sense bein’ the immovable object against the unstoppable force.”

“Still counts as a win,” Nat crowed. “And I have it all on video, too.”

Steve slowly unfolded his fingers, then, “it was my off-hand.”

“Well, then, why don’t we see how your right goes against mine,” Jenn suggested, nudging Bucky and Tony off the stool. “I always did want to try my hand at Captain America.”

“This is going to be like that Thor’s Hammer nonsense you all tried, back, what was it, just before the Ultron thing, right?” Maria Hill asked. “This I gotta see. You kick his ass, Jenn.”

“Well, kicking isn’t entirely what I’m planning to do, no,” Jenn said.

“I don’t want to know what else you’re planning to do with Steve’s ass.”

“That would be a conflict of interest at this time, Mr. Wilson,” Jenn said primly.

“I’ve tried that once,” Tony said. “Even with the full strength of the suit behind me, Jenn… well, she’s a Hulk. Everyone should have one.”

“Hang on, before you drag me off t’ be a lab rat again, I wanna watch this,” Bucky said, and he took a seat. “Here, you c’n just poke right here, if you gotta.”

Tony shrugged and went right back to practically sitting in Bucky’s lap. Bucky kept the metal arm loose around Tony’s waist, giving him something to lean on, while Tony poked, prodded, and messed with his phone, making notes, and pretty much ignoring the arm wrestling going on, right up until there was a horrific, shattering sound, and they stared.  
Jenn had not only taken Steve’s arm, his good, right arm that he used to wield the shield, down, but had split Dr. Banner’s worktable right in half.

“You suppose we could get her to go three falls out of five with the prosecuting attorney?” Bucky wondered. 

 

***

Tony looked up from the official-seeming piece of paper on his desk into Jennifer Walters’ green eyes. “You need to do what now?”

 

“I need to raid your Cap collection,” she said, putting one green hand on her hip. Really, there as just a lot of green there, and it was too early in the morning.

“Without actually having to read this, can you sum up the all important question of, why?”

“Partially, because I need footage of Barnes before all this Hydra happened,” Jenn said, and Tony was already getting up anyway, it’s not like he wasn’t planning on giving her access to it. “Although from everything that Barnes’ personal testimony suggests, he was already part super-soldier before much of anything went into the filming. The Howling Commandos and all that, he’d already been experimented on.”

“Does Cap know that?” Tony wondered.

“He might, now,” Jenn said, “Given that it’s obvious Barnes survived the fall from the train. He probably did not, at the time.”

“Which means Barnes probably spent most of World War Two in a state of constant hunger and anxiety,” Tony pointed out. “I know how much super soldiers eat, and K-rations were not going to cut it.”

“That’s good information to have, can you get me an appropriate medical file on Rogers, comparatively?”

“Sure,” Tony said. He’d been hungry -- in Afghanistan, food was one of the ways they’d tortured him. Along with waterboarding, sleep deprivation, being electrocuted, and forced to watch while they threatened Yinsen. He knew a lot about what desperation could drive a man to compromise.

Barnes, completely in Hydra’s hands--

Something squeezed around his heart, aching to think of his soulmate suffering like that.

“And we’re going to need to prove that his, oh, let’s call it conversion to the Winter Soldier, was not a result of the serum, but instead deliberate torture, memory erosion, and susceptible conditioning.”

“Of course it’s not the serum,” Tony said. He fished a card out of his wallet. The best security was a multiple lock, a thing you had, a thing you were, a thing you knew.

He had a card key, he was his biometrics, and he knew a long passphrase that he typed in. He wasn’t sure why he’d sealed all his father’s memorabilia and SSR files about Cap in a well-guarded vault, but what he did know about that was that none of this information had been included in Nat’s SHIELD data dump during the Hydra battle over the Potomac.

“If it was the serum, then Cap would be a psychopath,” Tony said.

“Not necessarily true,” Jenn said. “We have multiple examples, and my cousin, and the Abomination are among them. As well as Johann Schmidt, Sam Stern--”

“And you--”

“And me. So right now, it’s about a fifty-fifty mix, with the downsides looking pretty bad,” Jenn said. 

“I think you look amazing,” Tony said, pulling the vault door open.

“Flatterer,” Jenn said. 

“Truth is the most sincere form of flattery,” Tony told her. “So, that side is all the junk, marketing and promotional materials, this side’s all the war films, propaganda and whatnot. And this file is what we’ve got from the SSR vaults, it’s all described and cataloged. There are transcripts and film, photographs, medical files. It’s funny you don’t have to ask Steve for his permission. Not that -- I’m sure -- he’d hesitate to give it.”

“Well, the Captain has the problem of, he signed himself away to the SSR. He owns… nothing of himself from that period. And post that, with SHIELD, well, pretty much everyone who wanted that, they’ve got it.”

“Is that going to be a problem, do you think, how common knowledge--”

“There have been several cases,” Jenn said, “in which various United States politicians were investigated, based on the SHIELD info dump for corruption. I don’t think I need to remind you how fast Congress decided that any information from that dump was considered… potentially falsified. The data dump itself excited a bunch of people, scared a lot more, made the world generally less secure than it had been, and quite frankly, not much safer from Hydra in the long run. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re still lurking around out there, causing mayhem.”

“And what you’re looking for here is--”

“Untainted evidence,” Jenn said. “Which the prosecutor cannot subpoena because he doesn’t know it exists. Most people don’t know just how extensive your father’s obsession with Captain America was, or what he did, based on that obsession.” She put a hand on Tony’s shoulder. 

“Well, we all disappoint our daddies in the end, don’t we?” Tony wondered.

“Also,” Jenn said, “I wanted to talk to you in a secure location, and this is about as secure as it gets.”

“About?”

“This--” and she flashed a picture at him from her phone. It was a black and white, evidence photo from the coffee-shop melee. A squashed blueberry muffin.

“And--”

“Barnes’ soul words were known -- most people keep them private, as much as possible, but the military didn’t allow for a lot of privacy, and he was presumed dead when the various commandos biographies were released. Falsworth’s memoirs talk about a bakery shop incident with Bucky and Jones and Morita, involving a blueberry muffin.”

“And you want us to get ahead of the speculation,” Tony said.

“If you go public with it now, the secret won’t bite us in the ass later,” Jenn pointed out. “I know you wanted to keep it on the downlow, to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest, but keeping it secret, bankrolling his defense. You need to come clean.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Get married,” Jenn said. “Then no one can officially question your motivations in court. Especially when the information comes out about your parents. We don’t need that jack in the box sprung on us, unprepared.”

“You want me to marry my parents’ murderer.”

“No,” Jenn said. “Barnes did not murder your parents, or anyone else, and I intend to prove that in court. I want you to help me protect an innocent man so that we can go after those people who were responsible. And I promise you, Tony, I promise, I will not rest until we get justice. For everyone. Including you.” Jenn touched his face, to wipe away tears Tony hadn’t even known were there.

“If I believed in God, I would thank Him that you existed,” Tony said. “Are you sure you won’t marry me instead?”

“Yeah, no, I don’t think that would go over well at all,” Jenn replied. “But thanks for the offer.”


	9. Apple of his Eye

The communal kitchen was mostly empty except for a vaguely Bucky-shaped shadow sitting near the back corner, the smell of stale popcorn and fresh coffee, and a mug on the counter, next to the coffee pot. 

Tony was coming at his day from the wrong side of not-sleeping, and Bucky, apparently, was an early riser. _Yeah, this relationship is gonna work out_ , Tony thought sarcastically.

“FRIDAY said you were on your way up,” Bucky said from his corner of portable darkness. Tony flipped on the light switch, because hey, clean energy was a thing, and the building was full of it. Might as well use it. Also, the shadow lurking thing was annoying, and Tony wasn’t going to stand for anyone else being overly dramatic in his Tower.

“Mmm, yeah,” Tony said. He went ahead and poured himself a cup of coffee. He probably shouldn’t because the idea was to have one awkward conversation and then fall in bed, preferably until the hellstar in the sky was on the opposite side of the horizon, but Tony knew better than to expect eight hours in any given handful of days. But, coffee, and he was too moth-like to resist it. 

Tony stared at the wall near the coffee-maker, and then into his cup. Anywhere but at his soul mate. 

Didn’t matter much. He could feel Bucky there, a presence in his mind and in his heart and in his life. “Do you know much about the science of soulmating?”

Bucky shook his head, a gesture more felt than seen. “Just myth,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a lot of science in it. Soulmates are like faith. You either believe in it, or you don’t.”

“You know what the fun thing about science is? It doesn’t care what you believe. Gravity goes right along doing its thing,” Tony said.

“Is there somethin’ particular you think I ought to know about it?”

“Not really,” Tony said. “I was doing some reading, though. I always wonder, with people who never find their mates, and I thought for a long time I was never going to find mine -- where do the words come from, if you never find your mate. How does the great cosmic word-writer select words for people who will never meet?”

“I used to wonder,” Bucky said, slowly, “what they were for? Had a pal in the Army, called it unnatural selection, the great … _cosmic word-writer_ pickin’ who you should have babies with. That it was like, humans got, you know, tails, in the womb, but then our bodies go ‘oh, right, don’t need that.’ and maybe the soul words are just that? An ancient evolution boost that we don’t really need anymore, but we still sometimes get it.”

Tony wobbled his head back and forth. _Yes, no, maybe._ “Perhaps,” he said, contemplating the bottom of his coffee cup, and whether or not it would be in his best interests to have another. “So, Jenn thinks we should do it.”

Bucky made a spluttering noise and Tony mentally patted himself on the back. Nice to know his soulmate wasn’t entirely unflappable. Tony didn’t think he could stand it if he was the only one playing the world by ear.

“Do--”

“Get married, make the announcement. Everything official and sealed, signed, and witnessed.”

“Why?”

Well, that stung, just a little. “You don’t want to?”

“Want lots of things, dollface,” Bucky said, “but I don’t usually get ‘em. I thought you wanted to keep this a secret.”

“Despite what everyone thinks, I might be wrong. From time to time. About some unimportant things,” Tony said.

“Gettin’ married isn’t important?”

“Well, I didn’t mean it quite like that,” Tony said. “Keeping secrets. That’s what got us all into this mess to start with, from way back in the beginning. From what Jenn’s been able to find, you never told anyone, before the train, that you were serumed. Zola’s little knock-off, I guess?”

“Zola’s was the original,” Bucky protested, like he was defending it. “Erskine and your dad refined it, for Steve.”

“Yeah, Jenn said there were a lot of little vials being passed around, blue goo, green goo, red goo, brand new you goo. Point is, snowflake, Steve didn’t know you were serumed up until you showed up all not dead and thirty years old in D.C. I didn’t know you took a hit out on my parents. No one knew that Bruce and I were making a robot army in the basement. So many disasters, because none of us trust each other. That’s gotta stop.”

“And you think us gettin’ married’s gonna fix things?”

“I think that if we get caught being soulmates and people don’t know it, that’s going to make things worse,” Tony said. “I think I’m having trouble with the cover up. I think that my skin aches and burns and that I’m going to get caught at the wrong moment looking like I had an accident with a color printer because I’m rubbing at it. And I think, I hope… that if I do right by you, maybe, just maybe, Cap and I can learn to work together before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“That’s a discussion for another time,” Tony said. “Let’s just say I don’t think New York was the last of the aliens out there. I think they’re gunning for earth because we put a great big neon flashing sign that said, ‘hey, assholes, we’re ready to play in the big leagues.’ When we weren’t. Still aren’t. Other races were willing to leave us alone as long as they thought we were just fancy monkeys. Now… now they want earth, and I don’t think the US goddamn Army is going to be able to stop them.”

Tony was breathing hard at the end of his rant, hand braced on the countertop to keep himself steady. 

“Not that I’m questioning your logic,” Bucky said, “but… how is it you think being married is going to help with space invaders.”

“Damnit, Bucky, I need someone on my side here, someone who doesn’t have a ton of baggage with the others. Cap will go to war for you--”

“Point of fact, he did go to war for me,” Bucky said, mildly. “Do you think I’m on your side?”

Tony stared, tried to regather his wits that had scattered, then, almost aggressively, “Yeah, kinda do, Buckaroo. Aren’t you?”

Bucky nodded. “I am,” he said. “I’m on your side, because I know damn well that you’re on _my side_.”

“So why all the fuss?”

“Because I need you to know we’re a team,” Bucky said, moving closer. “We’re a team, Tony, and that means you can’t hide behind logic or what makes sense. None of this makes sense, but it’s the truth, and we have to deal with it. And the truth of the matter is that I--” His pale blue eyes jerked up to stare at Tony. “I love you. Whether I wanted to or not, whether I meant to or not, whether it’s a fucking disaster, or not. And if you can’t accept that, this is never going to work.”

Tony was struck dumb. Somewhere, out there, fate was laughing at him until she was rolling around on the floor and kicking her feet in the air.

Tony wet his lips. “Yeah,” he said, softly. “I know. I-- I accept that.”

Bucky was crowding him against the wall, and Tony should have felt trapped, angry, afraid, insulted, offended. But he didn’t. He wanted to be pinned in, held down, lifted up. Whatever was going to happen in the next ten seconds, he wanted it. “I love you, too,” he said.

So, naturally, that was when Steve walked in.

***

Bucky, for whom self- and situational-awareness were frequently matters of life and death, snapped his head to the side to watch as Steve Rogers stopped on a dime, one foot over the threshold of the kitchen. Bucky’d seen Steve at a loss for words a few times in his life; Steve was often caught flat-footed by events not going the way he’d planned. You’d think, a guy that had been beaten senseless in this alley or behind that building for most of his life would get a little quicker on the uptake.

But no, Steve just stared, mouth open.

Bucky, on the other hand, noticed that Tony stared at Bucky’s mouth, his hands on Tony’s shirt, and there was a light lean of his thigh, pressing against Bucky’s leg, before conceding to notice that he wasn’t being kissed senseless. And in fact, that Steve was in the room with them.

Every bit of Tony’s body language went from _yes, kiss me_ to _I am going to fight you_ in less than three seconds. 

Tony tapped Bucky’s wrist lightly, and Bucky let go, stepped back, and watching Tony unrumple himself.

“Morning, Rogers,” he said.

“What-- Buck-- the hell?” Steve stammered.

“Did you know Bucky likes cheese danishes? I mean, I had no way of knowing that, but… well, maybe you weren’t paying attention,” Tony said. “The same way you never noticed, or said anything, about the fact that I love blueberries. I know you had to know what Bucky’s words were, so it makes me wonder-- Did you know, Rogers? Did you know, long before we ever met, no suspicions, no idly curiosity?”

“Tony, I--” Steve started, then stopped. “Maybe. I don’t know. He was dead, he was supposed to be dead, I believed that he was _dead_.”

 _Supposed to be?_ Bucky’s eyebrow went up.

“What possible good would it have done for me to mention that my dead best friend, if he hadn’t been killed in action in 1944, might possibly have been your soulmate, you weren’t even born. Howard was all of twenty three years old. Lots of people like blueberries, you’re not nearly as special as you think you are.”

“Hey, I’m all the special I need to be,” Tony said. “You know, you never did get that cheese danish.”

“You didn’t get my blueberry muffin, either,” Bucky murmured.

“So I’m gonna ask you one more time, Rogers,” Tony said. “After all the lies. Did you know?”

“When he came back? I suspected,” Steve said. “It seemed too much of a coincidence at that point.”

“ _Sometimes my teammates don’t tell me things_ ,” Tony said, with the air of someone quoting. “So, here’s the thing, Cap. You might have missed it in the whole being shocked thing, but Bucky and I are soulmates. We’re a team. The question now; are you are on our side, or your own?”

“Tony,” Bucky chided, softly. There was no point in getting Steve’s back up any more than it had to be. No matter how good rubbing salt in that wound felt, no matter how much he was enjoying his word games and I told you so’s. “We’re all on the same side.”

“That remains to be seen, but hey, Sleeping Beauty,” Tony said, stepping past Steve and idly backhanding Steve’s bicep. “I’ll let you think about it, give you a few minutes to, you know, _process_ all that information. Bucky… let’s go have a muffin and talk details.”

Steve let them almost escape, before asking, “What details?”

“The wedding, Steve,” Tony said with an air of inevitability. “Of course.”

“Buck?” Steve’s blue eyes, the same color as the sky, were wide. “This is what you want?”

“You know as well as I do what a soulmate means,” Bucky said. “Want’s got nothin’ to do with it.” Next to him, Tony stiffened, just a little. “But if it was my choice, I’d still pick him. It’s probably why I was drawn to be here, it’s why we met, it’s why I came back. Because if there’s only one thing in my life that I want, that I have even the vaguest hope of having. It’s him.”

And Steve let them go.

They rode all the way down the elevator together in silence. Walked down the street. Bucky knew where they were going. Amy’s coffeeshop.

They didn’t make it quite to the door before Tony demanded, “Did you mean any of that, or were you just poking at the hornet’s nest of Captain America?”

Bucky chewed his lip, tipping his head to one side. “I don’t know that both isn’t a valid answer here.”

Tony stared at him for a long moment, the laughed. 

Bucky’d never quite seen anyone laugh like that before, a full on, belly-laugh, and Tony bent in the middle, putting his hands on his knees to keep his balance and laughed until he was wheezing.

Bucky couldn’t help grinning, and eventually, chuckling. The sound was infectious, glorious, perfect. Watching Tony laugh himself stupid was like watching a star being born; he went from darkness to light, from sadness to joy, and Bucky had never loved anything, or anyone, more than he loved Tony Stark.

“Okay, okay,” Tony said, wiping his eyes, and still snorting from time to time. “That was… okay, words or no words, I don’t think I was certain, until this very second, that you actually are my soulmate.”

“Even though you said you loved me?” Bucky wondered. 

“Well, I do have a bad habit of loving things -- and people -- that really aren’t that good for me, so you’re no special snowflake,” Tony told him. “Which, be warned, I have no intention of changing my terrible behavior, either.”

“You wouldn’t be my soulmate if you had to change yourself to make me love you,” Bucky said. “And I have a habit of loving some very stupid things. Example A: Steven Grant Rogers. I think I can handle you.”

“Oh, you can _handle_ me any time,” Tony said with a lewd wink. “In the meantime, shall we?”

Amy did not look pleased to see them. More like, resigned. “No blowing anything up today, if you please,” she said. 

“It’s never the plan,” Tony said, “no matter what you might have heard.”

She poured Tony a cup of black coffee, and made Bucky a caramel latte, and then shooed them into the back room. “Try to stay out of trouble.”

“I don’t think she likes me very much,” Tony lamented, taking a long sip of coffee. “Which is too bad, this really is excellent.” A moment later, one of her employees brought them their requested pastries, neatly on a plate, with little flairs of whipped cream.

“You have to gentle her back into it,” Bucky said. “Don’t blow anything up, two, three times in a row, she’ll forget she was mad. Keep doing it, and you become a regular.”

“Is this advice you’ve given before?”

“You have no idea.” Bucky smirked. “I think you like me.”

“Well, maybe,” Tony admitted. “Which I suppose is a good start, because we’re going to be getting married whether I like you or not.”

“Yeah?” Bucky wondered. “How’s that going to work?”

“We’ll have a press conference, I’ll say a bunch of stuff that’s only half lie, we’ll get our picture in the paper, and then we’ll go see the Justice of the Peace. Some sort of small ceremony. If nothing else, it’ll keep me from having to testify against you, during the trial. We just have to get it done quickly. But that should be okay, there’s usually only a 24-hour waiting period between applying for a license and getting the job done.”

“And the rest of it?”

“Hmm?” Tony took a bite of his muffin, sugar crystals littering his neat beard. 

“To have and to hold,” Bucky said. “Will I move in with you, or is this just a paper marriage?”

“This isn’t the 1820s,” Tony said. “Marriage doesn’t have to be consummated, and I’m not a virgin.”

“Well, that’s good,” Bucky told him, “as I ain’t, neither. So, that’s a no then, on this being a real marriage.”

“Oh, it’ll be real, snowflake,” Tony said. “Real and legally binding and all that. Whether or not we have sex… let’s-- look, we barely know each other. Which has not kept me out of other people’s beds. But since you are my soulmate and we will be married, why don’t we-- kinda try everything out before we go-- making a mess of everything. I like you. Let’s start small.”

Bucky drank some of his coffee while he thought that over. True, Tony did have a reputation for sexing it up with whatever opportunities presented themselves, which made it more than a little offensive that he didn’t seem to want to get busy with his own soulmate.

On the other hand, Tony did get busy with a lot of other people; that he wanted to do things differently, do them right, with his soulmate. Maybe that was a good sign.

Bucky… had no such qualms. He knew how he felt, he was pretty sure the sex would be amazing, and kinda wanted to get down to it as soon as possible, really. 

‘Honeymoon, then,” Bucky said. “Let’s… after the wedding, we’ve got like three weeks until the trial starts. Why don’t we, I don’t know, go off to a hotel in the Pocono mountains and get to know each other. Without everyone and everything else bein’ in the way.”

Tony brushed off his chin with a napkin. “You know, that sounds delightful,” he decided. “Okay. We’ll do that, then. If nothing else, it’ll keep me from having to do the damn press circuit, which I hate.”

Bucky smiled, satisfied. There hadn’t been a dame or fella yet that could resist his charm when he was trying. He would wear Tony down.

And then-- well, then he would wear Tony out. 


End file.
